Once Our Eyes Watered
by Becisvolatile
Summary: "Sherlock only ever told me the truth. Even when it hurt, especially then, he told the truth. That made him my friend, if nothing else." "No, Molly, that made him a twat." Ultimately Molly/Sherlock, just with a detour via Molly/John. I swear, it's for the angst! Slight mention of corpse mutilation. Nothing serious.
1. Once Our Eyes Watered

When Molly Hooper was a little girl, she imagined desperately that she'd grow to become a nurse. At the time, it hadn't occurred to her that she could do better, aim higher. There was no mystery in why she'd set her cap at following the Nightingale route. Her own father was a nurse. He'd worked odd hours, filled the clothesline with pastel green uniforms, the hall with orthotically sound footwear choices and the air with a smack of bleach and overcooked carrots. Mr Hooper had frowned on Molly's choice, refused to buy her the nurse costume, dissembled the doll hospitals that she had fashioned in her bedroom... His daughter would be more than just a nurse. Wide-eyed, sweet, loving Molly would do great things. In some other profession.

It wasn't that he expected a lot _from_ his daughter; it was that he wanted a lot _for_ his daughter.

And really, as it turned out, Molly had done quite well for herself. Admittedly, her father still (and somewhat erroneously) liked to refer to her as a doctor and not a forensic pathologist, but Molly was all about picking her battles, and that was one best left alone. He wasn't technically wrong, she held a PhD. She just had no plans on looking at his neighbours' gout anytime in the near future.

The funny part was, sometimes - and only sometimes, mind you - Molly imagined that maybe she really had missed her calling as a nurse. It might have been nice to be with the patients while they still had a chance of surviving. Forensic pathology was, to Molly's mind, very much like watching a film after you've read the novel. There's no surprises in how it's going to end (dead is _dead_, after all), just variations on the theme and a morbid interest in how they get to the ending.

The first time she fell in love was pretty much the nurse thing all over again. The object of her infatuation unsuitable, the inevitable outcome heart-breaking and (from the accounts of all on-lookers) she could have done better. Much better.

Only, was it really so hard to see why she held a fondness for Sherlock? It wasn't as though she was prime pickings. The wrong side of thirty, poor eye to mouth ratio (just ask Sherlock), terrible conversational skills (_Seen the new Finochietto retractors? Barley break a sweat busting open a ribcage these days. Brilliant._), the hours she kept (ghastly), the company she kept (predominantly dead, occasionally criminally insane) and, dear Lord, coffee stains on her blouse (again?).

So, no, running commentary from friends and colleagues aside - and really was she that transparent? - Sherlock Holmes had struck her as an 'elegant solution' to the mystery of her love life. If the obstinate man had just seen things her way he'd have seen how perfect it was. It wasn't as though she was a demanding sort. Nothing really would have had to change. As girlfriends went she imagined she was quite manageable, she had her own schedule to keep to, after all. How hard would it have been? Coffee, sneaky pinch on the bum here and there, eventually a sleepover.

Molly wasn't blind to Sherlock's limited emotional capacity, they could have gone slowly. It's not like she was fending off a glut of romantic interest - that disastrous thing with Jim aside - she was happy to wait. Only the knob had gone and killed himself, hadn't he? And, oh, she knew better than to speak ill of the dead, but when the bulk of the company she kept were cadavers... Well, it was tough.

Not that Sherlock was really - Well, no, he was sodding-well dead and all the 'gut feelings', midnight shivers and wishes in the world weren't going to bring him back.

He told her that she counted.

There had clearly been a miscalculation. Molly was as achingly alone as ever and Sherlock was still dead.

And if he wasn't? He'd wish he was once she got her hands on him.

* * *

John stalked into the Mortuary, mentally cataloging the places he'd rather be, even sensory overload and hounds held some appeal when faced with the alternative of stepping into Molly Hooper's little cave.

Such a docile and devoted girl. It wasn't right to reduce a person to a handful of embarrassing moments, but to him, that's all she'd ever really been. Not some wholly formed woman, not a professional, just a little girl, a collection of frenzied nerves, shoddy makeup and ripples scattering in the wake of Sherlock's unstudied - and eminently forgivable - callousness.

His watch read 23:14 and for any normal person it would have been laughable to assume that they would still be at their place of work. But Doctor Hooper wasn't normal. He wasn't sure if she owed her work hours more to a strong work ethic, a poor social life (his bet), or a mere quirk of poor rostering. At any rate, it was worth a try and if he was lucky she'd be home, in her bed, where all good little pathologists should be and he'd be free to put off this awful errand for a few more days.

Truly, it wasn't that there was anything wrong with her. It was just that something about her made him so bloody uncomfortable. As if the taint of every awkwardly unrequited sentiment that she had ever held still clung to her clothes and hair like yesterday's smoke. Sherlock may have had no heart, but Molly Hooper had been equally instrumental in her own misery by virtue of having no discernible spine.

Meek, mild and -

"Good God, Doctor Hooper! Are you defacing a corpse?"

The diminutive woman stumbled back from the body, dropping a scalpel as her eyes went wide (wider? How was that even possible?) and she dived toward the table, paper-white hands fumbling to cover the body. "I - I... It's late. You aren't meant to be here."

John's mind - just as slow as Sherlock had always sworn it was - clunked and turned, trying to make sense of what he'd seen. He'd moved quietly into the Mortuary, half lost in thought, half subdued by his presence in the silent 'den of death'. The quiet had afforded him quite some time unnoticed by Molly and in that time he'd spied... No. He was very much mistake. Surely?

Pale, thinner than he recalled, it was hard to gather much else with her gown and face-guard firmly in place, but the light tremor in her hand seemed at odds with the way she positioned herself between him and her table and puffed out her chest.

"How did you get in, Watson?" Oh, marvellous, barely even a squeak to her voice. She'd been practicing. He held up a proxy card. She damn near rolled her eyes.

"It was in his... Sherlock's effects. I suppose he lifted it from you some time ago?" He would have felt bad about brining yet another of Sherlock's betrayals to her notice had he not spotted the ghost of a blush in her cheeks. "Of course," he stuffed the card into his coat pocket, "You _gave_ it to him."

"I'll call security."

"Excellent, then we'll be able to get to the bottom of what you've been doing this evening?" John didn't need anything more than his rudimentary mental acuity to know that neither of them wanted to involve security.

"Tell me what you want?"

"He left some things here. He always had things here. I've come for them."

Molly looked down at the scalpel by his right shoe, stooped to collect it, then lifted her eyes to his face - still obviously keen to keep herself firmly between John and the body.

"Two riding crops, a sandal, a bag of fingers - disposed of, I'm afraid to say - a collection of hair samples and a toy throwing star. Nothing of sentimental value. You may leave."

"If it's all the same, I'd like to have them." She seemed agitated in a way that he'd never seen, at least not in his limited knowledge of her. A sniff, a tick of the shoulder, she placed the scalpel carefully in a nearby kidney dish and plucked off her gloves.

"Very well, I'll be sure to have them couriered to Baker Street at the first available opportunity."

"You've moved them?" Another eye roll, God Sherlock had left this woman with some woeful ticks, as she wrapped her arms tightly around her middle and propped her hip back against her table, clearly more at ease with the dead than with him.

"After," she cleared her throat, "_After_. The media were so _so_ horrid. The things they _said_. The things they _implied_. And who were we to discredit them? They had _facts_. The most damning of which was that he'd gone and killed himself. More surely than any admission of guilt, that sealed the ink on the pages. Everything he'd touched, everything he'd done. It all just turned to shit. His work was everything to him, I won't let anyone take it."

"Not even me?"

"I think you got enough of him while he was still alive." Both untrue and hurtful. It seemed Molly really was developing teeth. Now he just needed to find out what she'd been sinking them into.

"Molly? You're going to need to move now."

"How about we both move? I'll make you tea and we can-" It was a hollow offer, given through clenched teeth on a wavering voice as she broke out in a light sweat. John feinted left toward the feet of the body, Molly dove, giving him her back just long enough for him to plant his palm squarely between her shoulder blades and send her crashing to the floor while he whipped back the sheet covering the face of -

"Moriarty."

He expected her to scramble to her feet, to cry, to beg, to explain. Moriarty, and it truly was him, was very dead. Had been for weeks. More than a month. Well preserved, he supposed, for a man with an explosive trauma to the head.

There, just at the corner of his eyelid, was a bloodless but precise incision about five millimetres long and a little torn at the deepest point. That's where she'd been when he'd startled her. "I'm not him, Molly, and I've had bugger all sleep. Don't leave me to figure this out on my own."

Another bloody sniffle as she wiped her nose on her sleeve. Still no tears. "Bryn Glas," she supplied almost sulkily.

"I don't get it."

"He would."

"Of course he bloody well would. He'd also know the colour of your knickers, your plans for the weekend and the last thing you ate, I. Am. Not. He."

"Beige, work and coffee," her voice floated up to him.

"Boring, not a healthy way to spend the weekend and coffee is not a food."

"You are not my minder."

"Count yourself lucky. It seems I have failed dismally in that particular vocation. Though indulge me by listening to this bit of advice, and forgive me for not being able to provide an actual reference on this, but the desecration of a corpse is highly illegal. Almost certainly immoral and more than likely a little bit bent."

"Consider me informed. On all counts." She'd managed to right herself and sat cross legged, her back braced against one leg of the table.

John pressed two fingertips to his forehead and shut his eyes, "Fine. Fine. I'll bite. Bryn Glas? As in 'the battle of'?"

"Mmm. Something Sherlock mentioned once."

"Naturally."

"Welsh rebellion. They won. After a fashion. But not until they'd suffered years of punitive expeditions... Little visits where their women were raped and brutalised. Utterly destroyed and _humiliated_."

"Until their victory at Bryn Glas?"

"Yes, after the battle the men tended their wounds and the women flooded the fields looking for English bodies."

"Revenge on corpses? It's unbecoming, Molly, and - dare I say - unfulfilling."

"Well, I suppose I'll never know now, will I?" He looked down at her, mousy brown hair held back by an elastic that had been broken and retied, the severe part held in place by a clip covered with chipped black paint and then those huge bloody eyes looking up at him - hard, pained and maybe just a little more lively than he'd ever seen them.

"You were going to take his eyelids?"

"It's what they did, in the field. They robbed their tormentors of eternal sleep. Ensured that any who looked on them would know that these men - men who were always watchful - were not to be trusted."

John's first impulse was to tell Molly that Sherlock would never have wanted this violent justice - but something in him knew Sherlock may well have been delighted by the uncharacteristic display of violence. To Sherlock it would have been the equivalent to finishing a thousand piece puzzle - then finding a leftover piece. Just as he thought his work was done, there would be a shift in the light and an unexpected glint, an unimagined facet, showing his cubic zirconia for a diamond. Delightful. For a sociopath.

"We're all hurt by what happened to Sher-"

"Christ! Must everything be about that man?!" she hissed peevishly as she scrambled to her feet.

He wasn't actually sure if she was asking him, or herself. "To hear him tell it? Yes."

"Sherlock wasn't the only one that found a demon in Jim Moriarty! I was hurt too. Only I wasn't up to the task of facing off against him. He manipulated me! He used me and he _fucked_ me and he dressed it up oh-so-prettily and wasn't I just gagging for it? Wasn't I just primed and ready for everything that sweet Jim from IT had to offer?"

"Molly, you were broken up for an age before you even had a clue. It was all past tense until..."

"... Until the man that lied to me drove Sherlock off a building? And we know that's what it was - nothing else explains him being up there. Moriarty was involved. Had to be, and he cost me the only person who never lied to me. Even when it hurt, especially then, he told the _truth_. That made him my friend, if nothing else."

"No, Molly, that made him a twat," John covered Moriarty and tapped the table with a fingertip. "What's going to happen to the body?"

"They're finally releasing him for burial. Moriarty had secured a plot at Brookwood. all taken care of some years ago. I'm angry. Not idiotic. The mortician bathed him today. He'll go shrouded into the box never to be seen again."

Moriarty seemed smaller in death, somehow inert. Harmless. "You'd have gotten away with the eyelid thing?" He asked, cupping one shoulder and leading her away from the table.

"Free and clear. Just maybe not unscathed."

* * *

All things considered, and by 'all things' she mostly meant that ghoulish business with the eyelids (_Bad form, Molly_), it was time to take a few days leave. Maybe clear out her apartment a bit. Declutter. Simplify. Wash her hair. All excellent ideas and highly achievable if she could just bring herself to get off the couch and out of her pyjamas. Flannelette, tartan, pink, clearly from some disgraced tribe, pink made for hideous tartan.

Maybe it was time to send in those few final items of Sherlock's that John had come looking for. He'd had the good grace to keep clear of her since that night in the Mortuary. Well, good grace or a healthy fear of women who do unspeakable things to the corpses of their foes. Or at least plot to. She wasn't entirely certain that she'd had gone through with it, initial incision aside, it had seemed a rather grim business and Molly was perfectly well aware that there was no satisfaction in what she'd been planning to do.

Given her professional respect for the dead, something in the back of her mind kept telling her that her retribution might have cost her more than she'd initially considered. Watson probably had the right of it. Not that she liked that one bit.

John Watson had always been a bit of a non-entity to her. Just a satellite to Sherlock's celestial body, sucked in by his pull and doomed to do little more than orbit around him. Oh, and didn't that sound familiar? What was the saying? That what you hated most about others were the traits that remind you of yourself. Bugger.

He wasn't a bad sort, she guessed. He was loyal to Sherlock to the end and was, even still. Staunchly refusing to recant any statement of fact he'd ever made about their work, soon to be held accountable as an accessory. All things she'd learned from the telly, of course. His medical license had been suspended, he'd lost his job, spent his days hounded by the press and was very likely facing a lengthy jail sentence.

Oh, and he was newly single. Molly toed an edition of _The Sun_. Page 37, 'Everything Was a Lie: the Former Lovers of Doctor John Watson, Alleged Accomplice to the Manipulative Sherlock Holmes'. If her top lip curled any more she'd be left with a permanent defect.

It's not like anyone had listened to her either. Except she'd had the lucky (and vastly more humiliating) distinction of being deemed 'another of Holmes' lust-addled dupes'. Lust-addled? Just because she'd wanted the man in her knickers had not made her _lust-addled_. As far as Molly could tell it had made her sensible.

She wasn't blind to Sherlock's ways. She'd wanted him on an as-is basis. It would have worked. Perfectly, actually. She lacked social graces and he lacked the ability to notice. He'd have liked her well enough, eventually. She was getting better at the makeup, running every other day. She wasn't unattractive.

God, was Monday too early in the week for wine?

Was 10 am too early in the day?

One thing she knew for certain: it was far too early for someone to be at her front door.

Her eyes searched for a gown, but really she was covered. Just not decent. God, _pink tartan_. Nothing to be done for it. Reporters had long stopped knocking and her father had taken to sending her 'treasures' from his caravan trip around Australia. Most likely it was just another parcel to be signed for.

She genuinely believed that right up until the moment she edged open her front door and spied John Watson.

"Oh."

"You should warn people before inflicting those pyjamas upon them." Molly blushed, but let her door swing open.

It seemed in Sherlock's absence they'd both become just a little bit meaner. Maybe the universe had a way of allotting his abrasive manner so that there was still enough to go around. Molly led the way up the narrow and well-worn, but study staircase, into her two bedroom flat. Her wage was decent, she made a killing in overtime (how could she not?) and this was her one indulgence. Old, certainly, but the sort of old that real estate referred to as 'warm' and 'charming' and charged through the nose for. Luckily, she'd bought at the right time.

The flat was big enough for her to make a distinction between lounge room and kitchen, there was even something she might call a dining room in the space up against her large bay window. From the kitchen a narrow hall (well, narrow once she'd had the bookshelves installed) led to the bedrooms and her newly overhauled bathroom. Molly was proud of her home, with its parquetry floors, big windows and comfortable furniture. It suited her well and each time a new person saw it, complemented it, she felt as though the complement extended to her as a person.

John stopped at the top of the stairs, and surveyed the flat. He rocked back on his heels a whistled, "Unexpected, Molly. I was expecting more... I don't know, pink? Unicorns?" She snorted. _Note to self, remove stuffed unicorn from bed. Or, y'know, never let him in there._

"So I haven't been arrested," she passed into her kitchen and propped herself against her small wine fridge, "Thanks for that."

He pressed his lips together and nodded, "Well, yeah, police don't really put much stock in what I say these days."

"Their loss," she pushed away from the fridge with a bracing smile, "Tea? Or shall I just box up Sherlock's things for you?"

"That's not really why I - erm... I feel as though I may be about to trespass on your grief, Molly. So stop me at any time," he moved toward the kitchen and she backed up to the stove, trying for casual as she reached behind herself and switched on the kettle, "I think that last Thursday you might have, I don't know, made a breakthrough? And here I am ready to muck it all up for you. I'm a bit of a selfish git, I suppose."

"I was preparing to pluck off a man's eyelids. There's only so far one can progress from that in four days."

His gaze on her face seemed almost too intense. She turned to begin assembling their tea. "Say what you need to. Sugar?"

"None. Is he alive?" The tea canister cluttered to the floor, tea leaves scattering wildly.

"Loose leaf, more trouble than it's worth, sometimes," she muttered as they dropped to their knees and began forming small piles out of the tea.

"Molly..."

Her hands stilled and she tilted her head up, looking at him through a curtain of hair, all eyes and teeth gnawing at her bottom lip. "I'd be the last to know, John."

"But?"

"I swore - I'd tell no one."

"He asked for secrecy?" "No, but I gave it anyway. He was so... Sad, so bereft. I'd have offered him anything." She retrieved a dustpan from beneath her sink and began collecting the tea.

His hand, calloused but nimble, reached out and firmly grabbed at her wrist, stilling her. "What did he want?"

_Me_. "Nothing. Nothing more than usual. He was always after something. Always weird things. He just seemed, I don't know, edgier? He wanted me to take blood. Keep it here, store it. I don't know why."

John sat back on his heels, eyes firing with possibility, with potential. She shook her head softly. "Don't get excited. He never used it. It's still in the veggie drawer, John. See for yourself. I look every day, sometimes twice. Always hoping it'll vanish. It doesn't."

"How long will you keep it?"

"Until he pops out from behind a curtain, just like some clever child whose been playing hide and seek and found some marvellous hiding spot? Until I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's dead?"

"I saw it. I saw him fall."

"I read your blog. You also saw a hellhound."

He eased the dustpan from her hand and continued the clean up, while she stood and finished the tea. With tea bags this time.

"You really know nothing?"

"No. But I wouldn't be overly disheartened. That's ops normal for me. I'm just one little cog in a bigger wheel. How could I even begin to think there's a destination, much less fathom what it is?"

"Christ, my head hurts. Even from the grave he gives me headaches."

"One of his many talents, I'm sure," Molly handed him his tea and picked up her own as they starred at her muted telly.

"I'll likely be in prison this time next week," he blew across his tea.

"Should probably have you over for dinner before you go."


	2. Well, At Least I'm Not Dead

Molly woke to a peculiar sort of percussion that echoed through her flat. On any other morning it might not have registered at all. Yet, that particular morning, each rapid-fire sequence of dull beats tore through her skull.

She'd over-indulged last night with John.

Dear God, she'd over-indulged.

Chemically besieged or not, she was beginning to realise that the drumming could be cause for concern. John had left during the night (or early in the morning, time became a bit fluid after the third bottle of wine).

He'd backed nervously down her stairs stammering thanks and apologies as he went. "Look, thanks for the the dinner, Molly," he'd said, "It was... Yeah. Thanks for dinner."

The word he'd been grappling for was 'horrific'. Not because of the food. She'd served up a perfectly serviceable lamb stew with a fresh sourdough cob that she'd picked up from Waitroses'. The horror hadn't come until later. After the wine.

Molly kicked free of her sheets and duvet and rolled limply from her bed. The soft rug underfoot protected her from the cold hardwood floor as she spared a second to catalogue her situation. Last night's skirt and camisole, the matching cardigan was MIA. Her bones and joints ached in the manner that only a hearty serving of merlot could inspire and her memory - while fully and devastatingly functional - was remaining blessedly silent. Some things just didn't bear thinking about in the cold light of a hangover.

She was fairly certain that the drumming, now pinpointed to her lounge room, wasn't something that she'd want to deal with either.

Unfortunately, some traumas could not be put off.

The surprise didn't come from the fact that Sherlock Holmes was sitting on her sofa. He was a study in greyscale as he sprawled, head and legs handing from opposite arms of the cream and white striped two-seater. Alabaster skin, still-damp hair curling at the nape of his neck, longer than she remembered, charcoal grey shirt opened at the neck... He was exactly as, yet somehow _more_, than she remembered. Shadow licked at the hollows of his throat. He palmed an empty wine bottle, intermittently drumming his fingertips along the glass. No, this wasn't surprising at all. He was alive and Molly was barely moved to bat an eyelid as she shuffled into the kitchen, desperate for the barrier of her kitchen bench to keep the spectre of Sherlock Holmes at bay.

What _was_ slightly shocking was that he'd selected her flat for the site of his resurrection. She'd been expecting something more dramatic.

Her hand shook (the hangover, surely?) as she lifted it to smooth her hair down. _Oh, hair. Best not to think about the state of that_.

"Women with your nervous disposition and taste in upholstery really shouldn't drink red wine, Molly."

Something in her swelled at the sight of him, drinking him in and warming at his presence. Hangovers made her mean, but seeing Sherlock, hearing him (no matter what he was saying) felt right. Sherlock was alive, unchanged and whole. Her smile barely faltered as she planted a steadying hand against the bench.

"Red wine and white couches. I like to live dangerously."

His eyebrow kicked up as he set the bottle down. "I'd ask if it was a big one last night, but the evidence before me speaks more clearly than you ever did. Poor form, Molly. I need you sharp, focused. I'd consider it a personal favour... And something of a novelty."

She dropped the smile. "Death agreed with you then? You've not changed a bit."

His wolfish grin belied just how pleased he was with his little stunt. She'd never admit it aloud, but sometime, late at night, she entertained fantasies about Sherlock. Not the lewd kind - they were for the rest of the day - these were the sort where Molly applied her not inconsiderable skills as a forensic pathologist to devise the perfect way to plant the infuriating man deep in the earth.

What? Wasn't she allowed a _little_ fun in the face of his endless barrage of meanness?

That was the problem with Sherlock. Of course she'd mourned his death bitterly, but that didn't mean she hadn't fantasised about it before the fact.

"This isn't a social call, Molly."

She desperately tried - and failed - to cover her nervous giggle. "Is it ever, with you? A social call, I mean."

He twisted on her sofa, sat upright and narrowed his eyes at her. She knew she had to look dreadful. Still in last night's clothes, bleary eyed and gasping for a glass of water (or a sneaky spew, she wasn't sure which).

"You weren't alone."

"Hmm?"

"Last night. Keep up, Molly. Three empty bottles in sight, the remnants of a table setting for two. Tedious in the extreme that I even have to explain this to you."

Molly pinched the bridge of her nose. "You've _no_ idea, Sherlock. Are you here to state the obvious or is there something you need to tell me that I don't already know?"

Sherlock wasn't exactly shocked, never that, but there was the briefest flaring of his nostrils as he stood. "You were more accommodating the last time we spoke."

Ensured of his continued vitality, and that she was still a right bloody prat, Molly considered turning on her heel and returning to bed. She was mid-turn when he heard his snort of annoyance.

"Very well. Things Molly Hooper does not know - an abridged version I'm afraid. I haven't all day. Firstly, you're being watched. Look lively, Molly, the game has not yet run its' course. Second, I am to remain dead for all intents and purposes."

It may have been pure churlishness, Sherlock was probably right, but Molly felt the ridiculous impulse to deny the facts he was presenting. Instead, she simply sighed softly and nodded. "Anything else, Sherlock?"

"One thing."

"Do share."

"Your knickers are beneath the couch."

* * *

Jim Moriarty's corpse had been a pretty one, if you didn't inspect it too closely. Pretty and so very definite. Sherlock's had been less so, the jut and shadows of his cheekbones warped by the force of his impact, blood seeping and the general taint of horror about his corpse.

The more John tried to recall the vile scene of Sherlock's demise, the more the details failed him. All that he had left was the impression of horror and a tugging in his middle as though some unseen force had reached through his guts and gripped at his spine.

The worst part of it all was that if he'd been the sort to listen to Sherlock's advice, well... It brought to mind Occam's Razor: the simplest answer is usually correct.

Sherlock lied. Sherlock killed himself.

But for all of that, John could not bring himself to doubt the man. He'd lived with him, befriended him. Cared deeply for him. Sherlock was a spectacularly painful individual, but he was no liar (even when lies might well have been far easier) and he was no charlatan... And still John had watched him die.

He was standing at by Sherlock's grave, not for the first time that week, toeing the dying edges of the turf that had been rolled out to cover the fresh dirt.

"Right, well," he spoke aloud to the headstone, "just checking in. Had rather hoped you'd have grown tired of this 'being dead' lark. Seems a bit boring for you, didn't really picture you as the sort to enjoy being boxed up. I've been in a spot of trouble since you've left. They seem quite serious about this charge, you know, and I've cocked up rather badly with Molly. Your fault entirely, I hope you realise that."

Of course, John knew that Sherlock would realise no such thing. For one, he was to blame entirely for the business with Molly and, for another, he was almost certain Sherlock could not hear him.

Wherever Sherlock was, John was growing increasingly certain that it was _not_ in the ground beneath his feet.

* * *

_Fancy a coffee? - John_

Molly felt a swift bout of indigestion settle in as she sighted the message. She contemplated the text as she gnawed on her thumb nail. Actually, she couldn't think of anything she fancied _less_ and, for John's part, she was sure that the offer was simply extended out of some misplaced notion of pity, perhaps even shame.

_Have a bit on my plate, ATM. - M_

Her answer might have lacked bravery, but it was the only way she was going to retain what little dignity she had.

Yes, Sherlock had deduced some part of what had happened that night with John. But he'd failed to identify the missing party in her humiliating little tryst. A small mercy, but one she was deliriously happy about.

That morning, after Sherlock had removed himself from her flat, Molly had dragged herself through a shower. She'd barely even winced as she'd washed John's leavings from her arse and between her legs. Another small mercy, he'd been far too drunk to finish the deed fully. It had really been nothing more than a few artless pumps glancing across the soft skin of her inner thighs and then... He'd sobbed something against the back of her neck.

Molly held back a bitter giggle at the memory. She'd thought if anyone was going to utter Sherlock's name during sex it would have been _her_. Would have put good money on that bet.

She'd have lost.

Of course she could hardly blame John for what had transpired. They'd both been utterly complicit in their nasty little scene. Two desperate (and desperately drunk) individuals driving away the memory of a man who lingered more than any corpse should. John had stumbled back in terror, both of them sobering up very damn quickly.

"I'm not... I didn't mean..."

Molly had been left to pull her skirt down and push herself up from where she'd been bent over her couch.

"I think, maybe, er... Maybe we should call it a night."

It wasn't wrong, wasn't that what the bereaved did? Clung to each other, to their dearly departed and conducted ill-advised life-affirming relations? They might have been able to leave it at that if Sherlock had had the decency to stay dead long enough for the memory to die down. John would go to jail, maybe he wouldn't. She'd send him a letter. Maybe. Five years from now they'd see each other in the street and laugh that, in all of London, wasn't it a wonder that their paths would cross again?

Idiots. Both of them.

Molly set her phone face down on her coffee table, ignoring the rattle as it vibrated with a reply. Later. She'd reply later. For now, she needed to think.

Sherlock had told her she was being followed, but to what end? He was hardly the sort to just hand out information. He had to be driving at something, some goal or outcome. What did he want her to do? Wait? He'd told her that he'd be in touch but if she truly was being watched... Suddenly the wide windows of her flat seemed less 'cheery' and a damn sight more 'death trap'.

Moriarty was a dead man, that much she was certain of. She'd seen his corpse and few were better positioned to identify that than her. Jim had been a fan of 'making love' in the lounge room - liked to keep his eye on the football - she'd become familiar with every curve and mark on his body as it caught the flickering light of the TV. She'd never really been able to fault him as a boyfriend, not even in the wake of their rather dull break-up. Molly had thought the largest of his sins had been using her to hide his burgeoning homosexuality. Later on she'd come to understand that if that was the worst of his crimes she'd have been doing quite well.

It wasn't even that she'd been in love with him, it was more that she'd diligently applied herself to the task of _falling_ in love with him. As if somehow, by sheer will, she could move past her infatuation with Sherlock and on to a normal relationship, with a normal bloke.

Bloody Sherlock had ruined that too, without even trying. That was the bit that bothered her the most: the harder she tried (to seduce, to endear herself, to simply move on) the tighter he wound himself into her life... And he hadn't a clue that it was even happening. Molly simply had to sit on her hands, watch, and hope that she still counted when her usefulness expired.

She stood quickly, spurned on by a desire for activity and crossed the room to stare out of her bay window. There was nothing unexpected in the street below. It was a fair neighbourhood, not the best, but certainly okay.

Across the street there was a kebab shop with predominantly Arabic signage, newsagent next door, combined convenience and bottle shop, two boarded up shop fronts, and a tax accounting office. If she ducked her head she could catch glimpses of people going about their business within. On the street itself maybe a few dozen people streamed past, weaving in and out of the planter boxes that council had installed to spruce up the neighbourhood. No dodgy characters in trench coats. No spooks speaking into their sleeves. Sherlock was simply doing that which he did best: stirring the pot.

There was not a single damn person looking toward her second story flat.

Which might explain why nobody really noticed as an old model (early 90s?) Lexus with dark tinting pulled up to idle in the street below, lowered a passenger side window and hurled a burning glass bottle through her window.

* * *

Right, then. It looked like Molly had officially thrown him over. So to speak.

She wasn't answering his texts and really, he wasn't in a position to hold it against her. He'd brutally bent the poor girl over her couch, humiliated himself as a lover then called another person's name. A _man's_ name.

And all she'd wanted to do was cook him dinner before he faced the very real possibility of a stint in prison. Poor Molly Hooper, she seemed to be ever getting a raw deal from the men of 221B.

John wasn't convinced he had the mental fortitude to address that he'd called out Sherlock's name. He liked women, he'd very much fancied Molly's hips, breasts (Sherlock was an idiot to slight _those_)... But he'd have been lying if he said Sherlock hadn't been on his mind. Little else had been on his mind since he'd watched him fall to his death.

Unfair as it was, John simply had to concede that Sherlock had officially claimed every corner of his life.

Dead bastard.

His phone began to ring. Maybe he'd been too quick to judge, maybe Molly - No. Molly's number showed up on his display. This number had been withheld.

He hit 'accept' on his phone.

"John Watson."

"Lestrade, here. I need to talk to you about a Molotov Cocktail."

John's guts dropped to his toes as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't suppose that's your way of asking me out for a drink?"

"It's a bottle full of accelerant, lit and hurled at a target," Lestrade's voice gave little away.

"I know what it is."

"Then you might be interested to hear that one has been lobbed through the window of a mutual acquaintance of ours. Doctor Molly Hooper."


	3. A Memory of the Smell of Smoke

Molly Hooper seemed smaller in the hospital bed.

Logically, Sherlock knew that she was the same size that she always was. But there was something about the crisp white sheets that offset her hair, making it darker, and her skin, allowing a grey tint where usually he saw only a rosy flush and the occasionally dreadful smattering of makeup.

Something about her was normally always so _colourful_. She so often brimmed with a nervous energy that drew his eyes to the cacophony of details that made up Molly Hooper.

To him she'd always been the sum of her parts, discordant, jarring...

So often had her attention turned on him that he'd felt damn near assaulted, sandblasted by her enthusiasm and untiring willingness. So he'd done what came naturally, he'd held up a mirror and reflected all her facets, all her parts. Unfavourably and unerringly so. Hoping, maybe, to dissuade her from her childish infatuation.

It wasn't until she'd so openly accepted that she didn't 'count' that he realised who had been the childish one in their every encounter.

If he said that he couldn't help himself, that to deduce was in his nature, he'd be merely shifting the culpability and that would be a disservice to the poor girl - no, _woman_ - lying before him.

Yes, she was the sum of her parts - a pastiche of details, but weren't they all? And lying still, calmly asleep in the wake of all he'd done, all that he'd brought to her door...

She was marvellously whole.

She'd be fine. Scared, maybe. Scarred, certainly. He reached to run one finger over her knuckles - telling himself that he was merely marshalling his senses, leaving no stone unturned.

It was a feather soft touch and much more than he should have dared, he had scant minutes before... Someone came. Not family. Postcards on her fridge from Australia, from her father, told him that poor, odd, Molly would be relying on what few friends she'd had.

Maybe the man who'd been at her house the previous... No. Boyfriends stayed overnight. Whoever had had his way with Molly wasn't around for a long time, just a good one. Sherlock sneered at the thought, uncertain what irritated him more: that she was so desperate for affection that she'd allow just any man into her knickers, or that some right bastard had spotted the weakness that he himself had never quite been able to galvanise her against.

He brought his finger to his nose, rubbing it against his thumb as he sniffed. Petrol and some sort of oil.

She'd been far too close for his liking. The blade of her palm was covered with a dressing, so too the slant of her right cheek and her chest. A lucky escape, he supposed... But it was never meant to be. The amateur device had been merely a scare tactic. Not intended at all to imperil Molly. She was supposed to be at work. A photocopied leave form on her kitchen bench - signed by hand, yet Bart's was often applauded as a near paperless workplace, suggesting there'd been some sort of rush on it... No, there'd been a lot of effort put into making the warning look like a random act of violence and yet all that work had been undone because she'd taken a day off.

Sherlock's lips pressed into a thin line as he stood. No, this new threat to Molly was utterly unsatisfactory. Something would simply have to be done.

He shifted his surgical mask back into place and stood. He tucked a clipboard under his arm and kept his head low as he slipped from her room, Lestrade and John barely registered him as he passed with a nod.

Nobody ever questioned the man with the clipboard.

* * *

"... unconscious... no idea... where's her bloody chart..."

Bart's had always been such a hive of activity that Molly had often wondered how even the dead she worked with managed to stay asleep. Her mouth felt horrid, dry and stiff, her face swollen on one side as she struggled to sit up and speak. "Asleep, _not_ unconscious."

She cracked her eyes carefully to spot John, "You make an awful lot of noise for a doctor, John," she looked past him and gave a stilted nod to Lestrade, she'd already given a statement to him. He propped his hip against the foot of her bed and gave a jaunty little wave.

"And you look bloody awful," he shot forward, fully in doctor mode, and deftly but gently flicked open the ties of her gown. Lestrade coughed into his fist and eyed the ceiling.

"Go find some water," John directed him as he ran a finger over the edge of a dressing. Thankful for the excuse, the inspector scuttled from the room.

Molly looked down her body, the swell of her right breast was covered by a dressing roughly the size of two palms side by side. She tugged the left side of the gown back into place.

"You could have asked before undressing me," Molly griped.

John snorted, "Figured we might be past that. What have we here then?"

"Mild partial thickness burn, shoulder and top right chest, my shirt was briefly alight." She jabbed her left index finger toward her face, "Superficial burns on the right cheekbone, extending just into the hairline, won't be pretty. Lip and face are more banged up than burned. Feels bloody awful, but could be worse." She waved the blade of her right hand before his eyes, "Here too, uncomfortable, but the blisters all burst neatly, so they've dressed and patched it up for now. Might take a few more hours to see how the burns progress but we're hopeful."

His eyes softened as he sat on the bed by her hip, he wrapped a slightly singed length of hair around his fingers and sighed, "You might seem a bit more distressed, Molly. Someone threw an explosive device at you."

"A bottle filled with petrol, John. Hardly cutting edge. Besides, I caught it."

"With your face."

"Well, yes, but it _didn't_ break."

"So it's true, what Lestrade said? You actually hurled the bottle back through the window?"

"Hmmm, splashed a bit of petrol on myself," she waved at her chest, "Also missed the car, but I felt like it was a worthy retaliation. Saved my flat at least."

John appeared to be counting in his mind, trying to calm himself. "I, more than anyone, can admire a cool head in danger, but could you be a little less cavalier about it?"

"I should imagine it's the drugs speaking. Despite dehydration, every time I think about it I have to suppress the urge to go to the loo."

"That's normal. You're in shock, you're scared."

"Mostly I'm just pissed off," Molly tried to sniff indignantly - quite a feat given the way her robe kept parting. It might be the drugs talking but, doctor or not, John could at least have the decency to try and sneak a peek at the good side of her chest. Instead, he merely reached out and secured the ties more firmly.

"What will you do?"

"Well, I've asked Lestrade to try an sort out my window for tonight."

"Boarded it up myself, Molly," Lestrade had returned with a cup of ice and some bottled water, "Glazier should put in an appearance tomorrow, left your keys with them, they'll be at the office to pick up once they're done. I'm guessing your insurance will cover it, but when you feel up to it, it might be an idea to give them a ring."

"And is it safe to go home?" John asked as he poured water into the cup and held it up to Molly's mouth. She grabbed for the water and swatted his hand away.

"Officially? No reason to suspect anything other than your garden variety hoodlums."

"Which does not explain why you were investigating. Last I heard, arson was not your division," Molly noted dryly from her bed.

He had the good grace to look guilty, "Well, after Holmes... I, erm, I might have flagged a few individuals... Just to keep current on things, you understand? I must have forgotten to take your name off the list so when the call came in, it was passed on to me."

A long moment passed between the three. Nobody wanted to say it. But... did this link back to Sherlock's demise? The police stance was Sherlock was a fraudulent madman. John's head swam with theory after theory, but nothing he could present as fact and Molly... Molly knew damn well that this business had Sherlock's grubby, brilliant, hands all over it.

"Don't suppose there's any information you two could share that might give me reason to investigate this further?"

Molly busied her mouth with an ice cube and John mournfully dropped his head to his hands.

God, she felt like such a shit. He was mourning deeply, driving himself out of his right mind for Sherlock and Molly had it within her to ease him with just a few words.

"Fine," Lestrade buttoned his jacket as he prepared to leave, he seemed saddened as he spoke, "Without information, my hands are tied. You know how to find me if anything comes to mind. Stay safe, Molly."

Molly kept her eyes on John as he left. He wasn't quite crying, maybe he'd expelled too many tears already...

"I've about had it with him," Molly said softly as she settled back against her pillow.

"Lestrade?"

"Sherlock. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer that friends hang around through thick and thin. But I swear to God that I've reached the end of my tether. If he wasn't such a bloody tortured genius..."

"You wouldn't fancy him nearly as much," John supplied.

"S'pose not. But he'd be less of a shit magnet. Wouldn't be so much muck for him to drag us through."

John bit back a guilty laugh, "God, I wish you'd told him that while he was around to hear it. He might have taken you a little more seriously-" Molly winced at the words and John rushed to amend them. "That's not... I didn't mean... He took you seriously Molly. Trusted no one else when it came to the dead. I just meant... with the rest of it."

"Yeah, well, maybe I'm a glutton for punishment."

"You'd have liked Adler, then. Irene Adler."

"Oh, I've heard that name. One of Sherlock's..."

"Nothing like that, well... As close to _that_ as I suspect he's ever been. Which is to say, not very close at all. It's just that she was, I don't know, very different to you. Dead now, though."

"Bit of that going around," Molly noted as she fiddled with the dressing on her hand.

"Yeah, well," John reached for her uninjured hand and wrapped it in his own, "Don't fancy any more funerals, so you'll be staying at 221B for the duration."

"If this really does come back to him, do you think your place will be any safer?"

"Probably not. Smaller windows though. Fire escape out a back window. My sterling company."

"Can't wait."

"We'll get it sorted, Molly."

_Probably won't, but Sherlock might_.

"They'll release me tomorrow. I have a review with the doctor in the morning, then they'll most likely want the bed back."

"Right," John stood and clapped his hands together, "I'm going to jet off home to make sure our extinguishers are in date."

* * *

Maybe, John thought as he paced the lounge room, he'd been a little too keen to have Molly stay.

It was bad enough the way things had gone when they'd had dinner at her place, but now that she was in a cab en route from her flat where she'd picked up a few things, he was starting to think his idea had 'disaster' written all over it. 221B was still, essentially, a shrine to Sherlock.

How had he never noticed that until now? Now that he took five minutes to cast a critical eye over his home, all he saw was Sherlock's hand on everything, from the dressing gown still flung over the sofa to the steak knife that held a clump of articles to the wall...

Now he wasn't just the man who'd sobbed and snivelled his way through a hideous sexual encounter... He was also the man who meticulously treated his home as a museum to his departed best friend.

Good Lord, he was overdue for an appointment with his therapist.

At the very least, if anyone was going to be understanding about his inability to move on, it was going to be Molly. He'd lifted a selection of dressings from the clinic, had fresh milk and bread in the house... Everything he'd need to care for her while she recovered. His life might be a bizarre page in time - dog eared and waiting for a certain consulting detective to return to his place - but she'd find a measure of safety and comfort here. 221B was damn near indestructible and there'd be plenty of tea and toast for Molly when she felt up to it.

As it stood, it was too late now. There was a knock at the door and John moved to open it. Molly stood there in jeans and an oversized zip up hoodie. She looked, if it were possible, to be in worse shape than she'd been in at the hospital. Her face seemed a little lopsided and swollen. The burn to her face didn't seem to warrant a dressing anymore, but that didn't make it any less horrific. At least with the clean white dressing he'd been able to pretend there was nothing terribly wrong. The contact site of the burn, maybe half an inch by two inches, stood out in sharp relief against the angry and swollen plateau of her cheekbone. A slick of anti-bac barrier cream left a sheen over half her face. It would take weeks, maybe months to heal and there was no guarantee that it wouldn't scar or discolour. His fists clenched at his side. Molly simply stood before him awkwardly holding a duffel bag and her handbag in her left hand.

"Mrs Hudson let you in okay?" John took her bags.

"Mmm, she informs us that - and this in no way sets a precedence - she'll be bringing down some lamb ragout for our dinner."

"Ah, yes, um, lovely," John stepped back stiffly to let Molly in. She'd been to the flat before, he knew that, but he still felt nervous as she surveyed the room.

"Nothing's changed, then?" she perched herself on the edge of the couch.

"Oh, you know... I've been busy with... Being busy."

She smiled a small, sad, smile. "It's okay, you know. I really do understand."

"Yesterday at the hospital you seemed a little less forgiving. You said you'd 'had it' with Sherlock."

"I was distressed! Possibly also high. Still might be."

"No complaint about the pain, then?"

"Not really, why? Care to prescribe me something stronger?"

"No," John dropped her bags by the door, "I was going to suggest you have a word to Mrs Hudson."

Molly snorted and settled back into the chair. A handful of moments passed before John crossed the room and sank into the seat beside her.

"I suppose," he began cautiously, "That if we are to live together for a while, we should sort that other night out."

"Oh?" Molly made a show of tapping down the edge of the dressing on her hand. "Something happened the other night?"

John saw it for what it was; Molly offering him an escape. A chance to forget what had happened between them. He desperately wanted to take it, but more than that he wanted her to be at ease in his home.

"Just let me apologise, Mol." Dear, _Mol?_, that had quite slipped out.

"Look, John, I'm not entirely sure you're the only one who needs to cough up an apology. I mean, we both let it happen, didn't we?"

John released a breath he barely knew he was holding. "We were drunk."

"And," Molly had turned to face him, "If we start playing a blame game and working out who kissed whom... Well, it'll never stop."

Relief washed over him.

"Actually, you know what?" Molly's voice had taken on a speculative and vaguely amused quality. "I don't believe we actually kissed at all."

That didn't seem right. John scanned the depths of his memory for some details about their drunken not-quite-fuck. He'd licked her ear, he remember that. He'd... _bitten her chin?!_ Buttons had flown and her knickers had followed but... No, Molly was correct, they'd never kissed.

He groaned into his hands, "No wonder I'm single."

Molly was the first to dissolve into giggles and, faced with the absurdity of it, John was quick to follow. They laughed until they fell into a companionable silence, staring blankly across the room at Sherlock's vandalised wall.

"Don't suppose you want me to kiss you?" John asked in his most conversational tone.

Molly snorted, "Let's see: can't feel half my face, still ridiculously caught up on the Dearly Departed Mr Holmes... No, no thanks, John. Gentlemanly of you to offer, but I'm quite alight without."

"Just checking." Thank God. He was half certain he'd been joking anyway. Clearly he needed to sort out his own issues before he attempted intimacy again.

"So you're able to keep the flat, then?"

"For a while longer. We paid the rent when the cheques came in, I have at least another quarter before I have to worry."

Molly didn't speak, she just turned her eyes to a wilted ficus. Something shifted in her manner. She almost seemed _guilty_. God, if she'd just say... _something_. She had to know something: her silence, her anger at Sherlock... Nobody could be that angry at a dead man.

His voice dropped to an urgent whisper, "God, Molly, please just tell me what you know."

Her eyes shut tightly as she gave a barely perceptible shake of the head. "I can't. You know I ca -" she stood quickly and stuffed her good hand into the pocket of her jumper. "I'm tired, John."

Oh, how bloody convenient. "Upstairs, Molly, I've changed the sheets on my bed. I'll sleep in here."

She paused, half way to picking up her bag. "And Sherlock's room?"

"Give me a reason to believe he won't want it back some day." Molly simply sighed and turned on her heel.

* * *

There was a lot of John about his room, Molly decided as she skulked around. Occasionally she'd pick up a book. Mostly medical, some garden-variety thrillers none, more than a few pages in before being set aside, she could tell by the spines. His closet held a bizarre array of knitted sweaters, behind which he'd stashed three walking sticks.

She didn't feel particularly guilty about snooping, she was female. It's what females _do_.

Molly hadn't planned on crying off so early in the day. But then she hadn't expected John to start with the inquisition so early either. The least he could have done was offer her a cup of tea before he'd started. Still, if she was going to apportion guilt here, she'd be taking the lion's share.

How could she bear to watch John continue to suffer? It wasn't fair on either of them and, _really_, this was John: Sherlock's most trusted friend. No. It wouldn't do.

John deserved to know and she had every intention of telling him. She sat on the bed, the comforter held John's increasingly familiar scent and something like... Lemon maybe. Some sort of detergent.

_Dinner_, Molly decided as she kicked off her flats and curled up on the bed. First, she would take a nap and then she'd tell him at dinner.

She napped fitfully, barely having fallen into a full sleep when she was jolted awake by a loud crashing noise below.

She sat up with a start and fumbled in her pocket for her phone. It had just gone mid afternoon and - there was succession of three dull thuds and some breaking glass.

Molly jumped from the bed and ran downstairs barefoot, she took the stairs two at a time halting only when she'd reached the lounge room.

What she saw there was perhaps the most satisfying thing she'd seen in months. John had straddled Sherlock's chest and was in the process of using his fists to knock loose some of his excess brain cells. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, one hand planted against Sherlock's cheek pressing the other side of his face firmly into the floor.

"Oh, Sherlock's home," Molly tried to stop the wicked twist of her lips as she passed the two and sidestepped a shattered mug on her way to the kitchen. "Anyone for tea?"

* * *

A/N: Just a quick one to say 'thank you' for the feedback left so far. Fan fic is certainly a labour of love, and a relatively thankless one at that, so your comments and ideas are always very welcome!


	4. Relax Respond That's What People Do

Molly's only real concession to Sherlock's return was that rather than just making tea for both John and herself, she also went through the motions of making a coffee for Sherlock. She kept her back resolutely turned until John stalked into the kitchen to wash blood from his hands. She silently handed him a tea towel, then his cup of tea, as he settled against the kitchen bench beside her.

"You should go fix him," John said with a nod to the lounge, where Sherlock was presumably licking his wounds. His breath was a little thready, his hands shaking slightly.

"You're the doctor, John. Not me." She nursed her tea in her good hand and craned her neck to spot Sherlock as he gingerly got to his feet and shrugged out of his coat.

"You're a sort of doctor."

"For dead people."

"I'm halfway there," Sherlock deadpanned as he crossed into the kitchen to the freezer and withdrew an ice pack. There was a sharp pang in her chest as she watched him wrap the pack in a tea towel and cradle it against his face. It would be so much simpler if she could simply hate him. If she could lay all her grief and hurt at his feet and blame it all on him. But was he really to blame? _She_ was the one that had invested too much of herself in him. She was the one that had wanted so much more than he'd ever offered, maybe even more than he was capable of.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see John's white-knuckled grip on his mug. Molly wasn't sure what Sherlock had said to goad him into violence, maybe he hadn't said a thing.

"See to him, Molly, please." John said quietly as he locked a fierce gaze upon Sherlock's face. The two seemed trapped in a contest of wills, neither of them willing to break eye contact.

Guilt washed over Molly as she observed the silent communion between the two, she felt as if her mere presence was tainting the moment. So much needed to be said, to finally be acknowledged between the two...but there she stood, spectacularly lame and hideously disfigured (oh, fine, she was being _melodramatic_) as she drained her tea and waited for someone to move.

Sherlock was the first to crack under John's scrutiny. Had he lost some of his intestinal fortitude during his disappearance, or was he simply so besieged by the force of John's anger that he'd had to look away?

"You look dreadful, Molly," he observed quietly as he dabbed at a trickle of blood that threatened to dribble down his chin.

"Charming," she released a lusty sigh and tugged at a strand of hair freeing it from her ponytail, as though by allowing it to hang limply by her face framing the angry burn, she could divert his attention. But, no, Sherlock's attention could not be swayed. When would she ever learn that? She was blessed enough as it was that he'd failed to deduce that _John_ had been her accomplice in the tawdry little scene in her lounge room. It was clearly too much to ask that, even mildly concussed, Sherlock wouldn't turn his laser-focus on her mounting imperfections. "Get into the lounge, Sherlock. Let's not inflict you upon John any longer than is absolutely essential. He might get a second wind."

John stared silently at Sherlock's back while Molly snagged the cup of coffee and followed him to the couch.

"Back to stay, or will this be a flying visit?" She handed him his coffee, perched on the far end of the couch and regarded him. He'd rested the ice pack on one knee, it was just beginning to melt, turning the charcoal grey of his trousers near black. Long pale hands tapped out a gentle tattoo on the mug. God how she loved those hands. Always had. Close inspection revealed that he not only had the long tapered fingers of a skilled musician, but a collection of fine white nicks and scars scattered across his hands and knuckles. These were hands that were used, capable... Molly was an expert at identifying scars and something in her positively _itched_ at the thought of a few unchecked hours spent identifying causes and mapping out the details and theories of how he'd earned each and every one.

Christ she needed a good shag, she was practically sliding off the couch at the sight of his _hands_. Even half mad at him she still wanted him. Biology had a lot to answer for.

"I should imagine I'm back until this situation with you is resolved," he sniffed.

They both winced as John's mug clattered into the sink. With a great sense of purpose, John exited the kitchen and strode toward the door, snagging his jacket as he went. 221B rattled as he slammed the door.

A few beats passed before the door cracked open again and John's head popped back in. "Bit rude of me, Molly, sorry about that. Heading out for a spell, need anything?" He was doing a smashing job of ignoring Sherlock's presence.

"Grab some wine to go with dinner?" She asked as she waved him out. The door shut in a much more orderly fashion.

Sherlock and Molly sat in silence for a handful of seconds.

"Should you be drinking wine with your painkillers, Molly?"

"Absolutely not."

"Then why ask for it?"

"You said 'should', Sherlock. In my professional opinion I 'should not'."

"Ah..." He caught the direction of her statement, "Will you do it anyway?"

"Absolutely."

Sherlock's eyes returned to the door, the site of John's somewhat dramatic exit. "Have I hurt him so badly?"

What could she say to that? Nothing Sherlock didn't already know. Oh, he liked to pretend he was above social niceties, perhaps even immune to emotion, but Molly had long suspected that it was all a steaming pile of... "You might have handled it better..." She ventured tactfully.

"You mean I shouldn't have repeatedly smashed my face into his fist?"

Molly tried to stifle a giggle, "That's what that was, hmm?"

"I was... surprised that you kept your silence. Thankful, but surprised."

"I said I would. Why would I lie?"

"It's not that I expected you unwilling to remain silent, Molly. Simply unable."

Molly covered the uninjured half of her face with her good hand and groaned. "Have you always been this unrelentingly awful? Was it simply that I didn't notice, was I that stupid? I remember you being bad, but you had some redeeming qualities."

"I have no idea what you mean."

Time to change tack. Telling Sherlock that he was being _mean_ would be like taking issue with the rain for being wet. Childish, exhausting and utterly without reward. "What did you say to John. Did you just waltz in with a 'honey, I'm home'?"

"Of course not. I walked in, sat on the sofa and asked him to make me a coffee."

"Walked in from the street?"

"No, 221A, I've been living upstairs."

Molly scrunched up her nose. Poor John. He was such a good man, and Sherlock was... Well, he was Sherlock. She stood to leave the room, pausing at the door to address him. "Your nose is broken, Sherlock. I'd hate to see your spectacular profile ruined, you'd best patch things up with John quick smart before the swelling worsens and he can't reset it. I'd help, but my talents lie with with dead and you are, for better or worse, very much alive."

* * *

Sherlock was, after some consideration, not too surprised at how John had reacted to his return. He was disappointed that he hadn't had a little more faith that he _would_ return. Of all the people who'd passed through his life, Sherlock had felt certain that John would have worked it out. In time, at least.

Instead, he'd festered over Sherlock's absence, let fear and emotion take root and... well. What did it matter? It was done and now that John had had his tantrum perhaps they could go back to the business of sorting out the teeming mess that their lives had become. John still faced prison, the threat to Molly endured and Sherlock was no closer to clearing his name.

He hadn't been idle during his absence, but such little progress had been made that he might as well have never bothered getting out of his pyjamas. His very inability to chase down the remaining threads of Moriarty's network was baffling. It seemed as though, even beyond the grave, Moriarty's authority over those he had enlisted remained absolute. How did a dead man remain so far ahead of the game? Even his ability to anticipate future actions, to plan for all eventualities couldn't have extended this far past his death.

It appeared that Sherlock still had foes to identify, to study... to remove.

He needed a sounding board. He needed John. Sherlock moved to pinch the bridge of his nose, but thought better of it. John had been gone for nearly thirty minutes. Just enough time for a trip to Tesco, the selection of a handful of items, a lengthy stint of agonising over which wine to buy, time at the checkout (give or take two minutes depending on how he faired with the self-checkout function) and the return journey.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the front door and started to count. He made it to seven before John entered, wrangling a few plastic bags on the way.

"I need your assistance," he stood and took the bags from John, setting them aside.

"You need psychiatric help," John muttered as he stiffened his spine and crossed his arms.

It seemed that he'd botched this from the very start, it wasn't going at all how he'd expected. Maybe an apology. John did love observing social mores, they helped to remind him that he was far removed from Afghanistan.

"John, I know that seeing me... jump might not have been the most..." God, _how_ was he supposed to apologise for this? Common minds put so much stock in life and death, rightly so, he supposed. "I want to tell you that I am sor-"

John launched himself forward, Sherlock braced his feet wide to take the impact, not entirely sure he could withstand another beating. His anxiety was unwarranted, John wrapped his arms tightly around Sherlock's middle and held him tight, his face turned down as though he couldn't bear to look at him.

"_Don't_, Sherlock," his voice was choked with unshed tears and a wealth of emotion.

"Don't?" Sherlock asked gently as he uneasily rested one arm across John's shoulders.

The moment passed and John pushed away with a stern nod, "Don't."

And with that single word some semblance of normalcy restored at 221B (or as near to normal as Sherlock had ever known).

John blinked a few times, pulled in a deep breath then looked up with a bracing smile, "Need help with the nose? Might hurt."

"You needn't sounds so gleeful about it."

* * *

Molly supposed she might have been a tad more sympathetic to Sherlock's injuries, but these days she was finding herself less and less inclined to... well, put up with his nonsense. She inspected the bathtub in the small bathroom attached to John's bedroom. It was a tad on the small side, the enamel had worn thin in some spots but it did seem clean and serviceable. She needed to bathe and with her collection of dressings and wounds a shower wasn't the best choice, at least with a bath she could selectively submerge parts of her body.

With the water filling the bath, Molly reached for a bottle of fluorescent green body wash (good grief, it looked like toxic waste). It did, however, smell pleasantly of lime and rosemary and, funnily, of both John and Sherlock. Molly deduced that there'd been a twofer sale when John had bought them.

Or they'd showered together.

Her eyebrows snapped together at the idea as she dumped a generous amount into the filling bath. Now there was a thought... Two healthy, handsome men... Together... All soaped up...

... And Molly Hooper at home in an oversized _Dr Who_ t-shirt, watching _QI_, knocking back Baileys and wondering at which point it was socially acceptable to invest in more cats.

No, she wasn't so far out of the game that she'd stopped participating in her own fantasies. She started to undress and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. From a strictly physical point of view she could hold her own. Lovely legs from lunchtime jogs in the park, nipped in waist, decent bum, pale and - injuries aside - unblemished skin. Oh, she could do with a bit of a tan, but she was a Londoner and it seemed damn dishonest to buy one in a bottle. Lipstick was one thing, but a fake tan was another entirely. She preferred to flatteringly label her colour palette as 'English Rose' and leave it at that.

The stark white dressing on her chest and shoulder did seem to leave her looking a little washed out by comparison. She didn't even want to address the burn that slashed across her cheek. The burn on her hand was minor, but ran awkwardly along the blade and made it difficult for her to close her hand, or use it much at all. She reached across her chest to peel back the edge of the dressing. It would need a change and, one handed, that was going to be a bloody task and a half.

Perching on the edge of the tub, Molly turned off the taps and lowered her feet into the richly scented water. A decent quantity of bubbles had formed, but she'd been careful not to let the water level reach too high, she'd need to keep her torso dry. She grabbed a washcloth from a nearby shelf and slipped into the water.

There was a gentle knock at the door and Molly suppressed a groan.

"Erm, yes?"

"It's John, Mol. Can I come in?"

_No. No, you sodding well can't_. She pulled her knees up and draped the woefully inadequate washcloth over the uninjured half of her chest, awkwardly cupping her injured hand over the curve of breast and nipple that remained uncovered by the dressing.

"At your own peril," she replied, barely managing to nail a pleasant why-no-I-don't-have-a-problem-with-you-seeing-all- my-bits tone of voice.

"Not to worry," said John as stepped into the bathroom, "I am, after all, a..." His eyes had dropped to where she sat curled up in the bath, he cleared his throat and tried again. "A _doctor_. I am a doctor."

"Exactly who are you trying to convince of that fact?" Sherlock's deep timbre followed John into the bathroom as the man himself propped a shoulder against the door jamb and helped himself to a slow perusal of Molly's naked form.

_Right, well. Next time I shall run the bath as deep as humanly possible so that when the 221B Annual happens in the bathroom I shall be able to drown myself._

Molly's eyes darted nervously from John to Sherlock, "Did someone call a meeting in the bathroom?"

A muscle ticked in John's jaw as he turned back to Sherlock, "Out. Get out."

"You're allowed to be in here. She let you in."

"I'm here to help."

Sherlock's eyes went wide with mock concern, "Have you forgotten how to bathe, Dr Hooper?"

"With her dressing, Sherlock."

Sherlock rolled his eyes and pushed away from the door, Molly's relief was short lived as, rather than leaving, he made his way over to the tub and dropped to his knees.

Molly noted that, even with a hideously swollen nose and the promise of some spectacular bruising, he still looked devastating. Sitting naked as she was, the scent of Sherlock assaulting her on all fronts, his eyes assessing and calculating and her own mortification heating her from within, she wasn't sure if she needed to pass out or press her fingers to the ache high between her thighs and ease some tension the old fashioned way...

"Does it hurt, Molly?" He murmured close to her ear.

"_God, yes_," she whispered.

Thankfully her skin was already flushed pink from the steam of the bath. Her eyes shot to his face and she realised that he was addressing her shoulder and chest, _not_ her mounting sexual frustration. Probably for the best, she decided. What, with John hovering a scant metre away in the cramped confines of the bathroom.

She cleared her throat and shook her head, "I mean, ah, no. It's fine."

Those blasted long fingers reached out to peel the dressing away.

"Gently, Sherlock!" John cautioned.

"Is it wet?" Sherlock asked and Molly near cried with the effort to not laugh.

_You've no idea... _

"The burn, Molly," he was growing irritated, "Did you get it wet when you got into the bath?"

"I'm not a child, Sherlock. Perhaps you could leave John and I alone? Or do you feel the need to act as chaperone?"

Sherlock's face split into a wide grin, as if he found something truly funny. "John's practically a monk these days, and you're scarcely his sort of woman. I think your virtue is safe."

On that note, he stood, brushed off his wet knees and left the bathroom.

Molly waited until she heard him fully descend the stairs before she spoke, "Should we tell him?"

John smiled wickedly, "God no, it's so much more fun watching him be _wrong_."

Molly couldn't argue with that. With a sigh she gave up her last shred of dignity (if the bubbles wouldn't cover it, then John would simply have to cope) and sank back into the bath.

John turned his back to her, rolled up his sleeves and began to withdraw some medical supplies from the vanity. "Sorry about that, I thought he was still sulking about the whole nose business."

"Poor form, John. Next time give him a snack or put him down for a nap before you come find me."

"I'll try and remember that," he collected his dressings and swabs and sat on the edge of the tub, his back still facing her. "Want me to wait in the bedroom while you finish up in here?"

"Bit late for that. I'll only be a few more minutes," Molly set about washing her hair, careful not to let water trail down over her chest.

"Were you being truthful about the pain? Burns tend to get worse before they get better, Mol."

She didn't point out that she was aware of how burns worked, she merely continued to splash and rinse as she gave a small nod. "Nothing wrong with me that a bottle of wine won't fix."

John's smile carried into his voice, "In that case, I have just what the doctor ordered."

* * *

Oh, how he _despised_ being wrong.

Hated it with a passion. And he was always wrong about something.

This time, it was about Molly's breasts. How had he ever maligned them? They were perfect.

He was being purely scientific, of course, but seeing them in that tub, one scarcely concealed beneath a washcloth, the other overflowing the confines of her hand... Well, he'd have been a fool not to notice her stunning rosy nipples pressing against the cloth and peeking between her fingers. He was no fool and, come to think of it, neither was John. Still, John was a consummate professional in all matters medical, at least she was in good hands.

Sherlock stalked into his bedroom, pausing to adjust the growing discomfort in his pants.

Excellent, this is what his miscalculation had reduced him to. Base need and bad temper.

Feelings, especially sexual ones, helped no one and came to nothing. He'd thank Dr Molly Hooper to keep her cracking set of breasts under wraps for now. He'd had her neatly filed away in a shoe box in his mind palace, stuffed in there with a bag of marshmallows, a chipped teacup and... Good god, now there was a threadbare washcloth and a pair of knickers. Expensive, plum-coloured lace, the ones underneath her couch. He was gathering far too much Molly-related detritus in his mind palace. Soon she'd exceed the confines of her shoe box and that simply would not do.

She had - after a fashion - confessed to feeling no pain when she was in the bath... But her pulse had beat so strongly, so rapidly he'd noted its' throb and ebb behind the delicate skin beneath her ear. Her nipples had reacted, despite the warmth of the bath and her brain had grown even more scattered than was standard. And she'd been _rude_. To him. Cutting him down with the ease of a skilled sniper.

Nothing about that sat well with Sherlock. His growing awareness of her as a woman and her decreasing reaction to his indifference sat heavily in his gut. Sherlock released the buttons on his bloodied and ruined shirt. Time for a shower to clear his mind.

Perhaps a cold one.


	5. Life In A Box

Three days.

Three days she'd been cloistered at 221B and Molly didn't believe that they were any closer to getting to the bottom of their predicament. Of course, she didn't feel that they had been all that proactive in the pursuit.

John had hovered at the edge of the room, eyes fixed on Sherlock as if he expected him to vanish without a moment's notice (and given their history, it wasn't an entirely unfounded fear). Sherlock had swanned around being a right arse, waving firearms (confiscated), and rolling in the throes of his overwhelming genius. Or something like that.

Twat.

It wasn't wholly their fault. They were in the unenviable position of waiting for something to come to them. Sherlock was restricted in his movements, only able to leave the house at night and only then in disguise. Molly could only assume that he did what he could, he'd taken to leaving just after dusk and waltzing into the house (truly, the man had zero regard for the sleep of others) some time after midnight.

Well, the boys might be stuck in a rut, but Molly wasn't going to stand for it. She was desperate for her own bed, for privacy, for a night free of confusing dreams and awkward wants.

No, Molly didn't have the faintest idea how to look for the threat that haunted them all, but she did know that she'd never get closer if she didn't _start_ looking. Her efforts might not amount to much, but even Molly knew that sometimes all that was needed was a second pair of eyes, a fresh approach. She didn't have to know what she was looking for, she just had to _start_ looking.

Not that she'd tell Sherlock that. Not in a million years. He'd either view it as a pathetic vote of no confidence, or an overestimation of the capabilities of her 'fair to middling mind' (his words, not hers).

She'd risen early, well before dawn, and dressed well. A pair of Seven jeans in a dark denim that she usually reserved for dates (but since they were scarce, it seemed forgivable to wear them), a black Angora sweater that she'd bought with a gift card from her father and a pair of glossy black leather riding boots.

The look was severe, a tad expensive and so wholly unlike Molly that she felt dishonest in her own skin. Still, turning her skills onto Consulting Detection seemed like a momentous task so she'd dressed for the occasion. Makeup might have been a nice thought, but her burn wouldn't allow for it, so she settled for sweeping her hair into a high ponytail. She stuffed some cash and cards into the pocket of a cropped leather jacket and slipped her mobile into her back pocket.

Molly had left 221B long before the sun rose.

* * *

John eyed the dents in their fridge. ASP baton. Where Sherlock had even managed to get his hands on one of those, John had no idea. But it was clear that even their white goods weren't safe in the face of Sherlock's mounting frustration.

Maybe he'd take Molly out for lunch today, anything to get them away from the flat, maybe give Sherlock a bit of space too.

John flicked the kettle on and set about making a pot of tea, loose leaf. Molly seemed to prefer it. She'd been sleeping in more and more over the past few days, not that he could blame her. Sherlock made a lot of noise for a man who was still supposed to be dead. Still, it was getting past nine and John was well aware that some of the painkillers she'd mentioned had been linked to depression in some patients. Best not to let her sleep all day.

He passed the couch where he'd established a makeshift bed for himself (no hardship, since Sherlock was scarcely allowing any of them much sleep anyway), Sherlock shuffled into the room, wrapped snugly in a pale green sheet.

"We have company, Sherlock. Pants are always a lovely gesture."

"I don't wear pants for our Head of State, why would I start now? Besides, she left before dawn."

"And you, what? Let her waltz out?"

"She told me last night that she has a doctors appointment." "Before dawn?" "That did seem odd."

"I _am_ Molly's doctor. Sort of."

"No, John, you're just the one she lets into the bathroom."

It had become something of a routine between them, John would wait twenty to thirty minutes before making the journey upstairs to tend to Molly's wounds.

Sherlock had taken to watching the entire evolution with a scowl on his face.

"_Doctor_, Sherlock. I'm a doctor. I'm helping her."

"I tried to help," he dropped down into John's blankets.

"You slung honey at her face."

John had nearly had a heart attack the previous day when Molly had screamed in the kitchen, she'd been taken rather by surprise when Sherlock had set upon her.

"Medical grade Manuka honey sourced from New Zealand," he plucked at his sheet. "Proven to drastically reduce healing time and scarring."

"Yes, and she appreciated the thought once she got it out of her hair."

Sherlock seemed to be weighing something up in his head... "So she's lied to me?"

Only Sherlock would find something like that troubling.

"She's never lied before."

"She's done some growing as a person, Sherlock."

"I don't like it."

"Lies don't sit well with many people."

"No, not the lie. The change. People are creatures of habit. They should stay true to form. I can't very well figure people out if they go changing on me all the time."

"I'll be sure to convey your irritation to Molly when we find her."

"I'm going upstairs to work out where she's gone." John watched as Sherlock swept out the door and up the stairs in a grandiose billow of sheet.

Poor Molly had no idea what she had nipping at her heels.

* * *

As cemeteries went, Brookwood was rather cheerful. That could be the weather, which had moved from an early morning shower to a lovely, if bitingly cold, day.

Molly did have a slightly skewed viewpoint when it came to death. Nobody liked a miserable person working in a morgue - not that they liked a manic one either. She just saw a sort of balance in death. More often than not it was a release from pain, from sickness... Some were violent, pointless, far too young. Molly saw those too, but for so many death was practically a boon.

She deposited the keys of her rental car into her pocket and pulled on a snug pair of black gloves. The cemetery website had listed the grave as just over the crest of a nearby hill and as she neared it she crunched a few numbers in her head. She had a considerable head start on the boys, but they'd be starting to wonder where she was by now. Molly figured that Sherlock would take mere seconds to figure out the code of her iPad, less time still to check her browsing history and banking app. She'd booked and covered the cost of the car on her credit card. For someone like her there wasn't much way around it. You couldn't rent a car without a credit card and, at the very least, she could claim nostalgia or idle curiosity. She gave herself maybe another thirty minutes, an hour on the outside, before they appeared.

She had liked Jim for the short time of their courtship. She'd even slept with him pretty damn early on in the piece. He'd been charming in an unassuming sort of way. So eager to help her. To get to know her.

All a farce, she knew that now, but at the time it had been refreshing.

Molly shielded her eyes from the sun with her injured hand and surveyed the plots before her. A few people milled around in the distance, but one woman sat by a headstone, plucking at the browning edges of a slab of turf that had been laid over a fresh grave. She had a short blonde bob and wore a long floral dress beneath a cream coloured coat. Something about the woman was so sunny and bright. The scene seemed so utterly _wrong_ that Molly knew instantly that she was looking at Richard Brook's grave.

Reluctant as she was to intrude on the mysterious woman's grief, Molly knew that she couldn't pass up an opportunity for information. She edged closer slowly...

"Don't be shy, Molly Hooper. You've as much right to be here as I have. More, perhaps. I never actually met the man."

Oh, how Molly _hated_ the people of Sherlock Holmes' world. Did they always have to have one up on her? Did they always have to be just that one step further along? Sherlock, Mycroft, Moriarty... This was why she was starting to get along with John so well. One could only stand in the shadow of such intellectual titans for so long before they craved the company of mere mortals.

Molly's mouth pressed into a thin line as she marched up to the grave. It was a simple headstone.

**Richard Brook **

**1976-2012**

**"I had a lover's quarrel with the world." **

**- Robert Frost**

Fitting, she supposed. Elegant, almost. It was still the wrong damn name on the headstone though.

She slid her eyes sideways to her companion. She was a striking woman, but not at all suited to her clothes or hairstyle.

The blonde caught Molly's glance and chuckled softly. "Needs must, I'm afraid. I do look ghastly, don't I? It's Sherlock's fault entirely. He's turned me into a mouse."

Molly felt a pang of alarm. This woman knew far too much. "He does that," she conceded gently.

"And look at you. Not a mouse anymore. Dressed to kill, maybe even a mind to kill. Don't feel bad, Molly, we all start out decent. It's the Moriartys of this world that warp us."

Molly couldn't say that she agreed. True goodness lay in being able to withstand men like Moriarty without warping. Unfortunately, Molly knew her own decency was fading every day.

"I thought you'd look different, Miss Adler."

Hardly a leap to guess who she was. Reanimated corpses practically littered Molly's path these days, and there was only one woman who could claim an association with both Moriarty and Sherlock. Well, besides Molly herself.

"Oh, clever girl. I might give you a treat for that!"

"I might decline. Are you here for a reason?"

"Not really. Idle curiosity on my part. I never did meet Jim. But he was instrumental in my downfall. I thought maybe... I don't know. The same as you, I should expect. I thought maybe there'd be answers here. Are you sure you don't want your treat?"

"I thought you'd be less floral and more femme fatale," Molly murmured as she kept her face angled away from Adler. Awful clothes or not, Adler was still a spectacular display of all that was womanly.

"I've taken up a life in the Antipodes. I run some tea rooms in Sydney. The clothes don't make the woman, but they are handy for camouflage."

"You've come a long way to visit the grave of a man you never met."

"Jim's isn't the only body interred here."

Ah, things suddenly made sense. She was here for Sherlock.

"And have you been to the Holmes plot?"

"Yes, but I found talking with you _far_ more rewarding."

"How so?"

"Your words. When I said that Sherlock had turned me into a mouse, you said 'he does that'. And that, my dear, is not past tense at all."

The cold wind tore through the rolling fields of the cemetery, the two women seemed to move closer together at they spoke. Molly's couldn't help but smile. In another life she might have liked Irene Adler. "He may not remain in the present tense for long, not if we can't find a way forward."

Adler regarded her short, pastel pink nails with a barely concealed sneer. "I owe him a favour, you know?"

Obviously, she did not.

Adler continued anyway, "I performed an act on him on Pakistan, by way of thanks, at the time. Nothing serious. Just a vague oral gratuity. The problem with that man is that a girl can never gauge how she's doing. He gets this odd smirk about him and suddenly you can't tell if he's pleased with you, with himself, or if he's spotted a delightful formation of mold on the ceiling. Unbearable."

Molly's cheeks heated, leaving her with a feeling of nausea and dizziness. Of course she knew they'd been intimate, but it grated that Adler had this special insight.

"Don't look so put out, Molly. Look at you, all decked out in black, playing at your own game of intrigue. You'll grow into a lioness yet. I might have been the first woman he had - in a limited capacity, mind - but the real trick is being the last woman he ever _wants_ and that is a distinction even I have never managed to own."

Molly's shoulders sagged. These days she wasn't sure if she even wanted that. It was becoming apparent to her that Sherlock Holmes was an extreme sport of sorts. Pining after a man like that could leave a girl with a serious case of whiplash and a lot of regrets.

"I don't know how to help him." Molly's soft words were very nearly carried away on the wind.

"Are you sure you won't take your treat now?" Adler reached out and turned Molly's head to face her.

Molly could scarcely grasp the compassion she saw in her eyes as one pink-tipped finger traced the pale skin beneath her burn, then ran a slow and nigh-unbearable path over Molly's sensitive, wind-bitten lips. They stood so close, a single profile against the wind, as Adler leaned in to trace the stern line of Molly's mouth with her tongue. Molly's eyes remained open, observing, trying to work out what the Hell was happening, but not quite motivated to stop it. Adler took her lack of response as an assent of sorts and brushed her own pink-glossed lips over Molly's. The gentle kiss was more a greeting of sorts. A transference of _something_ between the two. What, Molly couldn't say. Something important. Something Adler had been holding onto for a long while. Molly tentatively returned the kiss._ Good grief. Is that her tongue? Mine?_

Moments later Molly stumbled back, flustered and shaken to the core.

Adler simply smiled a sad little smile as she fished a pair of pink knitted gloves from her coat pocket. "I suppose I'll leave you to run with this one for now," she nodded to a tree a few metres downhill, "There's a young man sitting behind that. I caught him tying to tear down Sherlock's headstone with a crowbar. He's an obedient sort, if you know the right thing to say. I'd suggest you have a chat with him before he grows a spine and attempts to flee."

_Find your bloody tongue, Molly!_ "And you're just going to leave?"

She pulled on a pink knitted cap with a seductive smile. It might not be her armour of choice, but she was still owning it.

"The trick, Molly Hooper, is to know when you're beaten. But there is also a skill in calling a retreat so that you never have to witness your own defeat. Please don't pass my regards on to Sherlock, I find it much more rewarding to give with the right hand, while the left remains unaware."

* * *

Sherlock had managed to garner exactly three pieces of information in the forty-five seconds that he'd spent in John's room unlocking and perusing Molly's iPad. He might have been able to pick out more, but he'd been working to a timeframe.

One, Molly's pass code was not, in fact, the numerical representation of the first four letters of his name.

Two, it was the numerical representation of her cat's name. For no reason that he could establish, facts one and two left him with something akin to indigestion.

Three, her web browser showed that in the past twenty-four hours she'd visited a pornographic site (female-friendly, excessive French kissing and cunnilingus, attractive actors, genuine breasts - couldn't hold a candle to Molly's), a car rental site, the Brookwood Cemetery web page, google maps and a page about something called 'lolcats'.

Fact three had seen the shoebox where he had placed Molly in his mind palace start to bulge at the seams.

"Moriarty's grave," he announced as he jogged toward his room. He dropped his sheet at his feet and began to dress, "We might even catch her if we get a hurry on."

* * *

Molly perched her behind on a polished marble headstone and offered up a silent apology to - she glanced down between her knees - Aida Trenton, loving mother and wife.

She tilted her head to the side, taking in the young man who sat red-eyed and wary, back up against a wide Alder tree. He couldn't have been much older than 16, his jeans and hoodie were serviceable, but not particularly trendy. Thankfully, his crowbar was nowhere in sight.

None of that was remarkable. What _was_ remarkable was how very clearly he shared some prominent physical similarities with Jim Moriarty.

Molly slipped her hand into her coat pocket and withdrew some ID, careful to wave it forcefully, confidently and (most importantly) keep her thumb over the picture. She waited for his eyes to flare with alarm before she stuffed it back into her pocket.

"DI Lestrade," she identified herself. Only the faintest pang of guilt twisted in her stomach, she was getting better at lying as each day passed. Mind, she'd have to be careful to return the ID to Sherlock's coat pocket before it's absence was noted, presuming it hadn't been already. "You understand why my... erm, associate... called me here?"

The kid glanced around nervously, "She's not still here is she? She's bloody scary."

His accent was Irish and his voice squeaked with alarm.

"No need to keep her around," Molly figured she'd have a better shot at playing 'good cop' to Adler's 'rather alarming dominatrix cop'. "That is... If you cooperate."

"I'm a minor, you know, you can't talk to me." He stuffed his hands deep into his hoodie while he glared down at his scuffed Vans.

"By all means, let's call your guardian. I'm sure they'd love to hear how you've been spending the morning." His lips pressed firmly together in his small pale face. He was an echo of the Jim she'd known, but this one's eyes burned with an irritation so removed from Jim's glittering energy that she hoped that their similarities were purely physical.

"Of course," Molly leaned forward on her tombstone and perched her elbows on her knees, "Vandalism isn't really my division. I could probably see my way clear to letting you leave here unaccompanied. If that's what you'd prefer?"

"'Course it is," he sniffed.

"Then you'd best tell me who you are and why you've taken such an exception to the dearly departed Mr Holmes..."

"I'm Dean Brook." Molly nearly slipped off her headstone.

"Brook? As in..."

"Richard is my brother. Was. Mum would go mental if she knew I was here. I saw he'd died in the paper a few weeks ago, she said not to come. She said nothing good had ever come from Richard. Never really spoke much about him. He was out of home by the time I was born. I remember him visiting from university on holidays. One year he and Mum a had a big row and that was it. Saw him on telly once or twice, that kid's show, as a dead body in some crime show. Then..."

"Then the Holmes debacle. You thought you'd have your revenge on the headstone?"

"I might not have known him well," Dean spoke down his own chest, "But he was my brother."

"He really _was_, wasn't he?" she murmured softly.

But if Jim truly was Richard Brook, then who the Hell was Moriarty?

"You said that... Richard and your mother fought? What about?"

"I never caught it at the time, but last Christmas Mum had a little too much port and she kept banging on about these two girls that had gone missing. They'd been at Richard's university."

"She thought he was responsible?"

"No," Dean struggled to his feet and brushed off his behind, "But she thought he knew who was. She wanted him to go to the police."

"He wouldn't?" Molly lurched to her feet, she sensed he was ready to leave, her injured hand awkwardly grabbing at his elbow.

"He was protecting someone, somebody at the uni. His name was -"

"Moriarty."

"Yeah. That's the one." Dean shook her hand off his sleeve and narrowed his eyes at her again, "Can I see your ID again?"

Molly slowly moved back and settled her arse back against Aida Trenton's headstone. She waved Dean away with a stiff flick of the hand as she dropped her head between her knees and started to draw in slow, measured breaths.

Fifteen minutes later, she'd composed herself enough to make her way to her rental car. Molly sat, drumming her gloved fingers against the wheel slowly, her mind slowly turning over what she'd learned.

She dropped her forehead to the wheel and clenched her eyes shut just as the passenger side door was neatly opened and the car dipped with the weight of a new occupant. The lime and rosemary scent might have been any one of them, but it was that something 'more', like books cut with clean linen, that told her it was Sherlock.

Molly made no move to lift her head as she spoke. "What if Jim Moriarty _was not _a Consulting Criminal?"

"Go on." Sherlock's voice filled the small car. Even the deep sound of his voice seemed to reach out and touch her, brushing warmly against the nape of her neck... As if encouraging a small child to come to some conclusion that was already common knowledge.

"What if Richard Brook was the Consulting Criminal and Jim Moriarty is an entirely different breed of beast?"

"Such as?"

"A _Mentoring_ Criminal," she kept her forehead against the wheel, but slid her eyes toward Sherlock.

Sherlock steepled his fingers beneath his chin and nodded slowly. "Am I to assume that you've some sort of evidence?"

"I can explain it all, if you'd like."

Sherlock twisted abruptly in his seat, he waved to John, who sat idling in an SUV next to them. John nodded once at Sherlock, then fixed his gaze on Molly as if checking that she was okay. She gave him a small nod. He returned a two fingered salute and drove away.

"You can explain Moriarty on the way home," he reached for his seatbelt. "For now, I have only two questions: why, despite your assurances that your pain is being adequately managed, did I find no medication in your room this morning? And, where on earth did you find that particularly noxious shade of pink lipstick?"


	6. Maidens Aspiring To Godheads

In Sherlock's Mind Palace there was a room. He had taken great pains to remove it from close proximity to that which furthered his endeavours and passions.

He would have deleted it long ago, if he could. But, unlike the others, unlike love, unlike family, unlike the extraneous details that pertain to the world, but not his day to day, this one was bound to the flesh _beyond_ his Palace. What was in that room had looked toward the 'want' with not a care for 'need'.

At the very least, he had been able to treat the room with the disdain it deserved. He had changed schematics so that it lay at the end of a long corridor, one that he knew he had no real purpose travelling down. Like all rooms in that place, it was changeable. But he had controlled it as best he could. The walls were beige, furnishings neat, orderly, sparse. A white chair, a single bed devoid of dressing.

He had visited it, from time to time. First in his adolescence, then as a young adult and again as a fully grown man. He had not chosen to tarry in the small and barren room. It confused him. He had no notion of what to put in there. Or who to take with him. Men? Women? Leather? Feet? Pain?

He knew that people typically participated actively in their own sexuality, rather than labelling it a 'room' and documenting its contents out of idle curiosity when work was slow. But it was what it was. He was not innocent, merely untried.

At some stage Irene Adler had infiltrated his room, but once she'd stalked in and taken a look around, she'd done nothing but lounge at the end of the bed.

He'd visited her there, once. He'd smeared her red lipstick, then they'd shared an awkward moment where she had shrugged up at him as if to say. _You have me, now what shall you do with me? _He had done nothing. Well, nothing _further_. He'd received oral sex before. He was a man, release was necessary (though typically it was by his own hand). Sherlock had left her there with a curt nod.

The night after they found Molly at the cemetery, he sat alone in his room. Hands resting on his knees, shoulders stiff and breath thready. The room was not how he had left it. Small changes had encroached. Adler was gone. The bed was made with crisp white linen. When he lifted the pillow to his face he caught the scent of his body wash, laced with honey.

The far wall had been adorned with a gilt framed mirror, Rococo period at a guess. What had drawn his eye was not his own reflection, but a message left in blood red lipstick:_ Best of luck. IA_

It had been signed off with a kiss.

* * *

Molly sat on the foot of John's bed. The day had been... good? Maybe. They knew more. At least, she thought they knew more. As it stood, the great evil they had encountered in Richard 'Jim' Brook was now to be labelled as the off-shot of a greater evil... Jim Moriarty Actual. Wonderful.

Molly was starting to long for the devil they had already known. This new, old, faceless Moriarty was too much of an unknown. To her, at least. Sherlock had accepted her findings with a calm acceptance that belied some prior knowledge.

The return trip had been Hell. It had been quite a task not to simply drive them into oncoming traffic and be done with the whole ordeal. Unfortunately, she as starting to find her spine where Sherlock Holmes was concerned. Which brought to mind why she'd been so meek in the first place; defying Sherlock was a fool's errand. Energy was lost, brain cells decimated in the pursuit and, chances were, the man was probably holding all the cards in any given situation anyway.

It was only just past seven, too early for bed, but she was upstairs sulking. Sherlock had changed the pass code on her iPad and she estimated that she'd need at least until morning to calm down enough to seek him out and ask what it was. So she sat quietly, dressed for bed in an oversized knit sweater, a pair of white cotton knickers, and some maroon rugby socks pulled up to her knees.

She'd bought the sweater during her 'vintage' clothing phase. The wide neck slipped loosely over one shoulder, on the front a kitten played with a bright red ball of yarn. She'd paid far too much for it, but at the time she'd thought it trendy and quirky. That was until Sherlock had spied her one day in the Morgue and labelled it a 'sartorial cataclysm of unparalleled proportions' (_Just. So. Mean_) and she'd relegated the cheery sweater to pyjama duty.

Maybe she should put some track pants on and seek out John for a game of Yahtzee? No. That too would have required her presence downstairs and as Sherlock had done nothing but prance (yes, _prance_) around the sodding lounge room all evening, she wasn't keen to put in an appearance.

God how she wished she could be back at work, back in her flat too, come to think of it. Alas, she was officially on convalescence leave and would be for at least another five days. Her flat was also, for no reason that Sherlock or John cared to explain, out of the question.

Perhaps she'd just text John to come upstairs? It might be the coward's way, but she knew if anyone would understand it would be John. She'd ask him to bring biscuits. And wine. Perfect.

Molly got to her hands and knees to ferret around in the bedclothes for her mobile, which was precisely how she was positioned when Sherlock swept into the room. With a squeak she flopped over onto her bum, yanking at the hem of her sweater as she went.

"I made dinner," he announced. He had clearly just showered, his hair curling damply around his ears. He was wearing checkered pyjama pants and a navy shirt. God, she knew he was fit, but those arms were a bit unfair. The man had never been to a gym in his life (that she was aware of), wasn't exactly the sort for heavy lifting either. Maybe flogging a dead corpse had fitness benefits that she was unaware of?

It was, she conceded, very hard to play it cool while trying to tuck your own knees up into your jumper, but that didn't stop her trying.

"Well," Sherlock added with a flip of his hand, "I asked John to make dinner. It's toast. Cold toast now. Would you care for some?"

How utterly un-tempting. "I was just going to have an early one, actually." She offered up a sunny smile and plucked at the hem of her sweater.

"Fine. I've made the bed, just pack your things and I'll squire you downstairs," He started to move around the room, eyes flitting from one object to another, but rarely settling upon her, as he stuffed hand cream, a phone charger, a water bottle and other various pieces into his pyjama pockets.

She knew she'd regret it, but she had no choice but to ask, "Downstairs?"

"Did I not tell you?"

_No, Sherlock. And don't you dare play coy with me because you bloody well know you didn't._

She remained silent, knees tucked up to her chest.

"I plan to install you in my bed."

_Oh_. Molly pressed her knees together a little tighter.

"John needs to sleep in his own bed, I want my couch back."

"What's wrong with my flat? I'm managing quite well now."

"Then why is John still doing your dressings? No. Not part of my plan. Downstairs you'll find some painkillers on the nightstand. Take two."

"My flat is perfectly fine, Sherlock. The window has been fixed."

Sherlock pivoted on his bare feet and lunged for the bed. His knee caught the edge, fists pressed into the mattress as he leaned his face closer to Molly's. "You're a smart woman, Molly. But if you truly fail to see the danger here... Perhaps not as smart as I'd imagined. This new threat means to harm those that are dear to me. Do you understand?"

She would have sworn that if she blinked their eyelashes would tangle. Her heart kicked up a notch as she shook her head. "But I - I'm not-"

"Dear to me? If you continue to labour under that misapprehension, Molly Hooper, then I may be required to detain you at 221b indefinitely. You will go downstairs, you will take your medication, because your burns are severe, the pain will increase and they don't give out awards for stiff upper lips. Unless you're John. You will sleep in my bed, because that is where I want you. And - most importantly - you will rid yourself of the dangerous delusion that you aren't up to your pretty kitten-covered chest in this game."

_Oh, where to start with that_. Molly got up and began to shuffle around the room, gathering her belongings, her mind ran at double time.

_In his bed? Because that's where he_ wants _me! He called my kitten pretty! Or my chest. Not exactly clear, that one. God Molly, you're bent. Where are my pants?_

* * *

The entire evolution of retrieving Molly had been more stressful than Sherlock had anticipated.

He'd never grasped how off-putting it could be to hold a conversation when one party had no pants on. Somehow, Adler's full form, so manicured and pointedly sexual hadn't prepared him for the insidious sensuality of a freshly-scrubbed and sparsely dressed Molly Hooper. Two more different beasts he could never have imagined. One lured and promised, the other simply... was.

If he'd been high handed, she hadn't complained. She'd merely tried (and failed) to conceal the surprisingly lush curves of her arse as she bent to gather some unfolded laundry and stuff it in her luggage. Sherlock had been minutes from announcing that if she continued her temptress' dance, he would have no choice but to haul her over his shoulder and deliver her downstairs himself.

Her blasted jumper wasn't helping matters either, he was mentally cataloging sexual perversions (to work out which one covered arousal via poor fashion sense) when she passed out of the room with a few soft steps, her bag slung over her uninjured side.

He did not follow directly on her heels, but rather took a few moments to compose himself. Pyjama pants were so unforgiving when it came to displaying a man's arousal.

By the time he'd returned to the lounge room he heard his bedroom door click closed.

Impolite, perhaps, but hardly surprising given Molly's changeable moods of late.

He might have followed her, but he was at a loss as to how to proceed. Sherlock was beginning to understand that his attraction to Molly was not fleeting, and while he was fully in control of his impulses, he was also beginning to see some merits in a dalliance with her. It was, after all, exactly what she wanted. She had always fancied him to a somewhat embarrassing degree. If, perhaps, by giving in to said impulses he could ease the constant curious chatter in his mind - and put Molly into a more docile frame of mind (putting to bed any and all of her Nancy Drew aspirations) then what was the harm?

Sherlock perched in the edge of one single seat, his knees to his chest and his feet digging into the oxblood leather. "John?"

John sat in his customary place, one eye on the telly, the other on his laptop. "No more toast, Sherlock," he said without lifting his fingers from the keyboard.

"I've a question."

"This should be good." Well, clearly Molly had spoken to John on her way to his bedroom. She'd put him in a snit too. Was the world so set against him lately? Fake your death _one time _and you'll never stop paying for it.

"You seem to have forged a friendship with Molly."

"Yes, we bonded over the mutual burden of our association with you." Yes, that suited him quite well. If he intended on embarking upon a physical relationship with Molly, it would ease the course if John liked her. Only one real obstacle remained.

"Is she seeing anyone?" John opened his mouth... Then shut it. He sat up and closed his laptop.

"Seeing anyone?"

"A man. Or woman, I suppose, though I'd be highly surprised," he stood and began to pace the room, speaking to the air as John's eyes followed his path. "She's been here four days and nobody, save her supervisor at Bart's has been in contact. So I understand it's nothing serious, but one does like to have all the facts before an undertaking. So I'll ask again. Is. She. Seeing. Anyone? Is there a lover, even part-time, that I should be aware of? Last week she entertained someone, a man. I need to be sure he's out of the picture."

John dissolved into a fit of coughs, his laptop very nearly slipping from his knees. Sherlock supposed it was possibly a mite unexpected that he'd enquire after Molly's past lovers. But, really, John was being melodramatic.

"And why would it matter?"

God, how it must feel to live with such a tenuous grasp of the facts.

"I've come to the decision that a physical liaison between Molly and I may be mutual beneficial. She has sought the association for some years now. I am a man. Even you would have to concede that it's just good sense to try and -how do you put it? - 'get off' with a woman at regular intervals."

Sherlock returned to his chair, he sat at ease, with one bare ankle crossed over his knee. There was a fire in his eyes that suggested he'd started the 'hunt'. It looked as if he was in his element, as if the entire world pleased him.

John pressed two fingers up against his temple, "And this other man? If he were around you'd stop your pursuit of Molly?"

Why did John sound almost hopeful?

"Not for a moment," Sherlock grinned as if he were the devil himself, "I'd simply have to eliminate him first."

Sherlock could have sworn he'd heard John mutter something under his breath before he spoke. "I have it on good authority that the man in question has ceased his pursuit of Molly."

"Brilliant!" Sherlock clapped his hands together and watched as John pushed himself to his feet, did he seem more pale than usual? Good thing he was going to his own bed tonight, the sleep would be highly beneficial.

He pottered around the room, setting his laptop to charge and grabbing his phone."So I take it Molly is aware of your plans?"

"Well, not as yet, but I doubt there will be any resistance on her front. She's fancied me for years. I shall make a token effort at wooing her, so that her dignity may remain in tact, and then we shall proceed."

At that, John actually began to laugh. Not a genuine laugh, more a dry, disbelieving laugh. After a few moments it petered off and he moved from the room toward his bedroom. He paused at the door to turn back and speak. "Don't you think she's suffered enough at your hands, Sherlock?"

* * *

Git. Sodding git. _Fucking git_.

John fell into his bed. His Molly-scented sheets were a cool balm against his Sherlock-inspired headache.

God, they deserved each other. All three of them. Worse still, John had to admit, they were _all_ to blame for the disaster that was unfolding in front of their very eyes.

He was no longer sure that it was a blessing that Sherlock had not identified him as Molly's one-time lover (god, what a laugh). At least if Sherlock figured it out for himself, Molly and he would be freed of the neat little omission they'd allowed to continue.

What amazed John was that, for all his powers of deduction, Sherlock had developed a massive blind spot where Molly was concerned. While Sherlock forged ahead is if nothing had changed, John had become painfully aware of one thing: Molly no longer loved Sherlock. In all likelihood, she never _had_. And who could blame her for that? She'd barely even known the man. Her infatuation had been built upon the many guises that Sherlock had paraded in front of her to meet his own ends. But now... now John saw only a woman who battled with confusion and lust. Molly and Sherlock had scarcely shared a civil word since his revival.

It wasn't that Molly was right not to love Sherlock. John knew there was much to love about him, it was simply that she'd never been given the chance. She had spent so long fancying herself in love with Sherlock, yet she'd never gone through the process of _falling_ in love.

It seemed almost tragic that, just as Sherlock was beginning to succeed in deleting himself from Molly's affections, the man had decided to 'woo' his way back into her good graces.

* * *

Waking up, Molly decided, was overrated.

Sherlock's room was not what she'd expected. She'd inspected it the night before when she had first entered. The chaotic warmth of 221b was left behind at the door to this room. Inside, the glossy bed frame, dark feature wall and expensive sheets spoke of an intensely masculine domain. In this room small concessions to the man himself lay scattered about, the Asiatic script above the bed, the periodic table by the door (god, had he amended that by hand?) the artfully mounted weaponry, the stack of books beside the bed... Some telling (_Asperger Syndrome and Long-Term Relationships_, unread) and some bizarre (_If We Can Keep A Severed Head Alive._.., disturbingly well-read).

Thick curtains kept the early morning light out, her internal clock hinted that it might be well after nine, but as she had no place to be she simply burrowed deeper into the bedclothes.

"You will have to wake at some stage, Molly." Sherlock's voice tore through her morning haze.

She sat up so quickly her head swam.

Only once she'd cracked an eye could she make out his form, sprawled casually on a dining chair beside the bathroom door. He wore crisp grey trousers, a blindingly white shirt. Even in the dim light of the room he seemed to glow. What right did he have to look so bloody lovely while she was... God. She was probably a mess. Her sweater had wriggled up in the night, giving her a rather embarrassing case of 'underboob' cleavage and while she certainly kept her stomach trim, it was so pale that she must surely be damn-near fluorescent. She didn't even want to get started on her hair (disaster) or her morning breath (hardly daisy-fresh). And then there was her face, slashed with the serpentine, cracking remains of an angry wound.

Had she been drinking? No, not last night. Maybe she'd been drugged in her sleep.

"Wha-"

"I bought you flowers." Sherlock nodded to a glass on top of the stack of books. Three tufts of Baby's Breath floated in it. "Mrs Hudson intercepted them, I hadn't the heart to tell her they weren't hers. That was all I could salvage as I handed them over. But I understand with these sorts of gestures that it's the thought that counts. So there you have it. The physical proof that I had a thought. A romantic thought."

Molly's poor beleaguered brain sputtered and stalled in the effort to keep up. It didn't help that Sherlock looked particularly dashing as he explained the flowers, waving around those fucking beautiful hands, his well defined lips moving sharply around each perfectly enunciated word and...

"Sorry, Sherlock. Why are you here?"

"It is my room."

Molly dropped her head back to her pillow, "Mmm, yes, and as soon as I am at liberty to return to my flat you may have it back."

"That is not why I am here."

Good grief. She just wanted to _sleep_. He'd played the violin for the better portion of the night. The melody had been slow and winding, such an erratic and sexual piece that - had she thought Sherlock capable - would have brought to mind the most painful of sexual longing. She'd dreamed that night of Salome dancing for King Herod, stripping away the layers to bare herself. Maybe if she just pretended to fall back asleep he would leave.

"Do pay attention, Molly. If we are to forge ahead, I require your willing participation."

"Forge ahead with what?" Somehow she just _knew_ this was one of those questions she'd regret later.

Sherlock had fallen silent, Molly lifted her head a few centimetres to watch him... fiddle with his own hands? Oh, certainly the man was always fiddling with something, but this seemed to be a genuine case of nerves.

"Sherlock?" she prompted again, this time injecting gentle encouragement into her voice.

"I have not, perhaps, made my intentions as clear as I ought. I'm sure it will come as no shock to you that I have developed... that is to say... I have designs on your person."

Molly's brow furrowed. It had been doing that quite frequently of late, she was going to have to investigate Botox. She wasn't exactly conversant in Sherlock, that wickedly lofty language that he adopted every so often to cover the fact that his words were destined to be unpopular. But Molly suspected that she had the gist...

"Perhaps I should speak plainly?" Sherlock dropped his hands to his knees in an effort to still them.

"Please."

"It is my intention, one that I suspect you will support, that we become lovers."

Molly's capacity for kinky thinking was, believe it or not, very well developed. When she had imagined scenarios in which she and Sherlock finally got their act together, she was of the 'anything goes' school of thought. _Anything_, she amended, _except his suggestion coming in a manner so staid that he might as well have been asking after my last smear test. _

It really was too much to be borne. She hadn't even had coffee yet. Worse still, her traitorous body was very much on board with Sherlock's plans. Her nipples could, quite conceivably, cut glass and other, lower, areas were practically quivering. She'd turned into the simpering sort of lass with a busted corset that one would find cleaving to the legs of some brawny Highlander on the cover of a Harlequin novel.

"Are you high?" It seemed appropriate to ask. He'd come to the morgue high once. It was an embarrassing episode neither spoke about. He'd been such a force of nature that night (plus there'd been that electronic hedge trimmer to worry about) that she'd had no choice but to sedate him and let him sleep it off beneath her desk.

"I hardly see how this can be surprising to you." He stood and moved slowly toward the bed. Molly was at a loss. He'd cut off her retreat. He had her cornered. _In his bed_. "Should I tell you how pleasing I find you, Molly? Will it help?"

The bed sank as he sat by her hip. His eyes moved over her in such a way that she practically drowned in the attention. She wondered what he saw, what he thought. A warm, rough, fingertip traced the sliver of exposed flesh beneath her breast. That single touch, the path over her sensitive breasts, elicited a response not unlike pain. Molly hissed, but he continued, undeterred as his fingertip dipped beneath her sweater, up over the heavy curve of her breast and to her nipple. Once, twice... he circled, his lips twisting into a satisfied smile as he realised how hard it was. "Oh yes," he whispered, "you please me immensely."

This had to be a game. With Sherlock it was _always_ a game.

Molly gripped his wrist, allowing her short nails to dig into his flesh, just to let him know she meant business. "I. Won't. Play." Even as she said them, she knew the words were a filthy lie. If he pressed, if he removed so much as a single sock, she'd be his for the taking. But she had _some_ measure of pride, and she refused to be Sherlock's 'rainy day activity'... there to be used when the outside world proved boring or inhospitable.

"You have reservations?" he asked as he settled his hands back on his knees.

"You haven't the first idea about women." She'd been referring to their emotional needs, of course. But Sherlock mistook the statement entirely.

"It is true hat my sexual experience is... limited. How you know that, I'd dearly like to find out. But if you are concerned about the proceedings... well, rest assured that I will apply my not inconsiderable skills most diligently to the pursuit of your pleasure."

What a terrifying thought.

"I am we'll aware of the dynamic between lovers, Molly. Ours will be a relationship founded on mutual pleasure." He took her hand to press it to his cock, he was thick and hard, pressed tightly against his slacks, "Have faith that I shall rise to the task, Molly."

As treats went, it certainly beat an omelette in bed. Molly arched her back and smiled softly to herself as she traced the length of him through the fine fabric. Poor Sherlock. He didn't have a fucking clue.

"Kiss me?" she asked sleepily. At least she was giving him the chance to redeem himself.

His face played out exactly as she'd expected. Not to mention that rapid softening beneath her hand. Panic, confusion and something calculating flitted across his face as he tried to formulate an appropriate answer, but it was too late. He'd had his chance.

Molly rolled in the bed, giving Sherlock her back. She tugged the sheets up and over her head as she dragged a pillow down and wrapped herself around it. She spoke through the sheets, it may have come across mumbled, but there would be no mistaking her words.

"Piss off, Sherlock."

**A/N: **Once more I'd like to offer up my thanks for your feedback. It is always very welcome. Also, I have to confess that I find writing my way around 221b to be a bit of a nightmare. The layout barely works, not exactly sure where Sherlock's bedroom is, the only option I can come up with is somewhere off the kitchen, which seems odd to me. Anyone know better?


	7. Taste Your Tears

**A/N: **Just a quick one: adult stuff ahead. You've been warned.

* * *

John had watched Sherlock drag a dining chair down the corridor and into his bedroom where Molly slept. He'd felt a moment's uncertainty, then decided to dress for the day and give the two some privacy. If, by some miracle, Sherlock did manage to seduce Molly, then he certainly didn't fancy the idea of being in the lounge reading the Daily while it all happened.

As it happened, he'd only just dressed and returned to the lounge for his house keys when Sherlock stalked into the kitchen, slamming a door as he entered.

"Not a rousing success, then?" John asked as he pocketed his keys.

"Not especially, no." Sherlock seemed unable to meet his eyes as he raked a hand through his hair and unconsciously passed the other over his chest, as if he were in pain.

What must it be like to, after so long eschewing all physical impulse, suddenly have want, perhaps even need, of a woman? John almost ached on Sherlock's behalf. How could such a brilliant man have such limited insight when it came to the emotional spectrum?

"Maybe next time, yeah?" He tried to sound encouraging.

Sherlock looked at him as though he'd started speaking in tongues. "You think I'd line myself up for that... that vile _humiliation_ again?"

Christ, it can't have been that bad. And yet Sherlock had a genuine look of distress about him. One John had seen rarely in the time they'd known each other. "Some things are worth the pursuit, Sherlock."

"She won't have me... She wants me, but she won't _have_ me. She'll put us both through this awful business of perpetual dissatisfaction and for what? Pride?!"

John chose his next words very carefully. "Perhaps you need a new approach. Don't skip so far ahead. Have a care for Molly's feelings, Sherlock."

"And what of my own?" Sherlock damn near hissed as he swept from the room.

John could only stand in his wake and stare. Sherlock's feelings. How easily both Molly and he had forgotten them. Of course, he was aware that they existed. But they'd always existed peripherally, just out of sight. If they did not assist in solving a case they did not factor.

...and if he truly believed that, then he was every bit the idiot he'd so often accused Sherlock of being.

* * *

"Up."

That single command was followed by a rush of cold air along her legs as John swept her bedding away and then turned to yank the curtains open.

Molly groaned in frustration as she tried to hook her foot into the duvet and drag it back up. Not a chance in Hell she was getting up anytime soon. Christ it was cold.

"Bugger off, John." Molly rolled her face into her pillow, then winced as she realised her burn would stick to it. Ugh.

"That might work on Sherlock, but not me. You have an unfair advantage with him. I'll thank you to stop exploiting it."

_Exploi - Sherlock_? She was exploiting Sherlock? Why was it, then, that every time she faced off against the man she was left with the disquieting feeling that she'd brought a knife to a gun fight?

"Don't look at me like that. You swan around all legs and breasts and _hurt_. Sherlock might not fully understand it, but he's genetically hardwired to respond to all of your nonsense."

"Like you did?"

John's withering look told her just how low that comment was. Fine. She'd give him that one.

"If I get up, will you leave me alone?"

Pain and pity danced across his face as he sank down on to the bed at her feet. "What happened to the sweet, willing girl who loved kittens?" He reached for one of her feet and dragged it into his lap, where he held it in his hands, warming it.

She wanted to cry. What _had_ happened to her?

"She grew up," she spoke softly as she wiggled her toes against his palm.

"But did you have to become mean?"

"It's always worked for _him_."

"You can't be serious," John tried to suppress a snort, "The man can count the people he trusts on one hand and still have fingers left. He faked his own death because he was in a tight spot. It is seriously unhealthy to use Sherlock Holmes as an aspirational model for interpersonal relationships."

He did have a very strong point. Molly scrambled from the bed, dragging with her a pillow to cover her behind as she walked to the bathroom. As attempts at modesty went, it was ludicrous.

"Farmer's Market?" she asked with a sigh. "I think I might make dinner tonight."

"Not sure I'll be in," John's gaze was fixed in the bed she'd just vacated, she turned in the bathroom doorway and dropped her pillow.

"Oh?" Damn, she'd have to find another way of extending the olive branch to Sherlock.

"Cook anyway. He's been living on toast and he'll feel honour bound to eat anything you've cooked."

"You're leaving me alone with _him_? After this morning?"

"At this point in time, Molly, my greatest concern is leaving him alone with _you_."

* * *

As he rounded the corner onto Baker Street, Sherlock turned up the collar of his coat. He had spent the evening following useless leads, securing dissatisfaction in his investigation alongside his personal life, which seemed a fitting way to neatly round out the day. His dark mood and the cold wind whipped him into a melancholic stint of remembrance...

By the time Sherlock had reached the age of nine he was fully aware that he did not fit in. Yet, he had not quite yet been rid of the desire to fit. He continued to try. He excelled at sport, though was never picked for teams. He excelled in class, but was simply shuffled along to a 'special' class. He had every gadget and toy imaginable, but could entice no one, save for Mycroft, to share them with him. But he was not defeated, not yet.

By nine (and after reading multiple editions of the Hardy Boys - somewhat below his reading age, but entertaining nonetheless) he had decided that by helping people solve their problems he would earn the right to be their friend. It hadn't taken him long to decide that Davie Markham was destined to be his first friend. Davie was an ideal candidate. He wore long sleeved jumpers on the hottest days of summer, went to the bathroom roughly three times as much as any other boy and still hadn't learned to read.

Davie Markham had a very real problem. One which Sherlock was quick to bring to the attention of their teacher. For his efforts, Sherlock was scalded as a sensationalist and a liar. He stopped trying after that. Nobody had wanted Sherlock, or his particular skill set.

Seven years later Davie had taken his own life, Sherlock had finished school by then and it was a bitter sort of vindication for the outcast adolescent.

In some bizarre way, his exclusion from Molly's bed had dredged up the memory of his school years. How desperately he'd wanted to 'fit' a certain mould... and how completely he'd failed.

Okay, so he'd not exactly prostrated himself at her feet while spewing rainbows and promising forever. He was no liar.

Well, not in this instance. He was, however, a dead man. He had little to offer her. She made more than him, had a nicer flat, was liked by most people that knew her, had the sort of body that most men could easily worship and had a perfectly serviceable mind.

His worldly possessions included a skull, a sword over his head, a smashing wardrobe and his considerable intellect. None of which would do him a damn bit of good when it came to luring a woman into bed. Yet he still found himself unable to put Molly from his mind. Were it simply a case of her breasts... Well, he might have found any number of suitable replacements. Unfortunately for Sherlock, Molly had a good deal more going for her.

She had, during his absence and perhaps even before it, assembled herself into a a rather alluring package. Was that what Brook had seen in her? Did that not make him the biggest fool in existence? That 'Jim' had seen her worth and weaselled his way into her affections (and her bed) while Sherlock had simply spent his days trying to discourage her infatuation. _Like a base Indian, threw a pearl away, richer than all his tribe._..

Sherlock eased his way into 221b and came to a halt as he surveyed the room. John's coat was absent from the hanger, the flat smelled enticingly of food, even though at two AM it must have been hours since it was cooked. The scent was not in keeping with any of Mrs Hudson's stable of six faithful recipes, leaving Sherlock to gather that Molly had been cooking. For herself?

"I made dinner." Molly's sleep-roughened voice echoed the very words he'd spoken little more than a day ago. Only he'd been offering toast. "It's a roast. Was. I'll microwave it."

He could barely make out her form, curled up on the sofa nearest the window, so he reached out to turn on a lamp. The soft light illuminated her slight frame, clothed in jeans, a plain white singlet and her favoured cherry cardigan. Thick pink socks warmed her feet.

"You had dinner with John?" He tried for a casual tone.

"No, he left after lunch. Harry's in town, I think. Well, he didn't exactly say that. But he got a bit snippy, so I took a guess."

Sounded about right. Well, this wasn't half awkward. What was the protocol for a chat after a failed attempt at seduction? Should he just sweep in and kiss her? That had seemed like a trick request at the time, he'd suspected she'd want more than just a kiss. Molly was the sort of girl who liked her kisses to have _meaning_.

"He should have sent me a message. I'd have come home. We'd discussed this. You aren't to be left alone." He shrugged out of his coat and threw it over the arm of the sofa.

"I don't need bloody supervision! I just -" Molly stopped herself. Took a breath, gnawed on her lip. She seemed to be struggling internally. "Sorry. I am trying to be polite here, don't suppose you could work with me?"

"I would love some dinner," he spoke carefully, measuring her response to each word. She gave a small nod and smile as she got up and moved toward the kitchen. _Oh, good job, Sherlock_! And not the slightest hint of offence given.

He followed her into the kitchen. The table had been set for two, even his (admittedly pathetic) attempt at flowers graced the setting.

"You haven't eaten?"

"I grazed when I carved it. Figured I'd wait for you."

"And if I hadn't come home tonight?"

Molly looked away, guilty. She got up and busied herself as she removed two meals from the fridge. "I packed my bags at about nine. Decided I'd leave if you weren't in by ten."

Panic flared in his gut. He needed her where he could control her. Okay, not control. _Supervise_. "But you didn't?"

"Ten rolled around and I thought 'just a bit longer, give him a chance'."

"It's past two now. That's a lot of chances, Molly."

"I suppose so," she deftly stuffed one meal into the microwave.

"May I request one further chance?" It seemed prudent to ask while some of her former pliability was to be in force.

"I'm not sure what you mean..."

"Forgive me for the way I behaved this morning? I was... brutish."

"If you'll forgive me? I was... unkind. I suppose it can't be easy for you either."

He wasn't quite sure he liked that. Did he really want her casting him as the blushing, stammering virgin?

"Though, next time, I might suggest you don't watch me sleep, fondle me, then demand we shag. Well, not at first anyway."

"And might I hope for a 'next time'?" He didn't want to seem too eager. Hoped to God she couldn't see how his hands shook as he sat at the table and watched her.

"How about we start with dinner?"

* * *

Molly cleared away the dishes and declared their dinner a win. Well, sort of. Technically, it was breakfast. She wasn't tired, though. She'd managed quite a bit of sleep on the sofa, no wonder Sherlock favoured it.

She knew her resolve to refuse Sherlock was at an all-time low. There was something unsettling about the way Sherlock's eyes tracked her movements throughout the small kitchen. He seemed almost _hungry_, despite the meal. But for all that was going on in his head, he kept his fists clenched on the table top and barely spoke out of turn.

Molly wanted to scream. Had she pushed him to this odd behaviour? There had to be some sort of balance.

"Any progress with Moriarty?" She asked as she wiped down the kitchen benches.

"I've got Mycroft on it. He's a nuisance, but he has his uses. He was refusing to help me until I visited our mother. She's taken to bed since the news of my death, refuses to leave it until she has sighted me."

"So you went to see her?"

"Not quite. Mother is... difficult. I prefer to deal with one trauma at a time. Mycroft and I came to an understanding. He'd follow up on Moriarty, and I'd call her."

"Has Mycroft found anything?"

"No Jim or James Moriarty has held tenure in any tertiary establishment in the UK. Richard Brook attended a school called Gaiety, not a university, a Performing Arts school. No leads there either."

"So nothing?" Sherlock gave a tired nod.

Well, that wasn't promising.

If he'd been anyone else she might have offered a hug. Molly wrapped her arms firmly around her middle. It was time for bed. She just wasn't sure what was going to happen once she got there. The tension that pulled at Sherlock's shoulders was obvious.

Did he have doubts? Had he changed his mind? Nerves? Not likely. This was Sherlock Holmes. Modesty wasn't in his repertoire. The tension surely came from his lack of leads.

Molly slipped behind him and dropped one shaking hand to his shoulder. He tensed even further and she had to force herself to sustain the contact. The heat of his skin damn-near burned her through his shirt. She gently squeezed the bunched muscles of his shoulder.

"I'm going to bed, Sherlock..." She let the invitation hang in the air, unspoken.

Fifteen minutes later she sat on the edge of Sherlock's bed, fully dressed, and decided that _perhaps_ she should have spoken that invitation after all.

She knew that she was being terribly contrary but... _really?!_ He really had no intention of following her to bed and trying again? Had she upset him that much the previous morning?

Alright, yes, she had absolutely no right to be put out that he wasn't trying to get into her knickers, not after the way she'd shut him down.

Molly shot to her feet. Right or not, she'd thought he understood. Did she need to go out there and strip down just so he'd get a bloody clue? Actually, _brilliant_. That's what she'd do.

Molly yanked the bedroom door open and rushed into -

Oh.

He made such a beautiful picture, standing as he was beside the door. His impressive frame leaned against the wall, his forehead pressed against the wallpaper, his expressive face screwed up with ugly (but beautiful to Molly) emotion. One fist raked through his own hair, while the other rested against the wall above his head. His wide back shook with contained energy. He didn't lift his head as he spoke, "I won't kiss you."

Molly remained silent until he cracked open his eyes and turned to look at her.

What did a kiss matter, in the grand scheme of things? It would be one less thing to miss when this fell into a jumbled mess at her feet. And it would. Anyone could see that.

"I'll survive," her voice was small, almost polite.

"I'm sure we can put my mouth to better use, anyway."

Well. She couldn't very well say no to that, could she? A few beats passed in utter silence. Their breathing seemed to synchronise...

... and then came the rush of activity as Sherlock launched himself from the wall toward her. Her face hit his chest as his large hand smacked over her arse. She was gathered up in his momentum, practically crawling up his body to wrap her legs about his waist. Her mouth found the strong pulse beneath his ear and latched on. Sherlock tasted of salt and bitter aftershave, but she couldn't bring herself to mind. He growled as her fingers pulled at his hair. For his part, he simply propelled them toward the bed with an intense sense of purpose. Molly didn't care. She could barely even _think_. Nothing existed for her but the infuriating ache between her thighs. Thick denim, knickers and Sherlock's own clothing abraded her suddenly hypersensitive flesh.

Sherlock's fingers bit into her hips as he attempted to still her writhing. "Molly, please. I can't. Slower... less. Softer maybe... I just..." He dropped her to the bed, pressing his hands to her shoulders to put space between them as he stepped back and sucked in air...

Perhaps she'd been a bit keen.

His skin flushed pink, as his eyes raked hotly over her. "You. Confound. Me."

Was that good? Oh, how she hoped that was a good thing.

She lifted her shaking hands to the small buttons of her cardigan. "Should I..." His eyes cleared briefly.

"If you're offering to remove that monstrous cardigan, Molly, it doesn't matter what the situation is. The answer will always be yes."

Molly lifted herself up onto her elbows. "If you mean to penetrate me at some point in the near future, Sherlock, I'm going to have to ask you to be nicer. Not always, but right now. Please?" She popped a button on her cardigan, then another. He seemed to have lost his ability to communicate verbally, but Molly was starting to think that maybe, in this instance, there was some merit in silence.

She tossed the cardigan across the room, then her singlet. The bra proved a little more difficult. With her burn she'd grown accustomed to fastening it at the front, and then shimmying it around before slipping the straps on. It wasn't exactly a sexy process, even in reverse. She'd leave that for a moment.

She got to her knees and reached for Sherlock, not daring to meet his eyes as she worked on the small buttons of his shirt. He seemed frozen in place, his stilted breaths the only reminder that he wasn't some figment of her imagination. Her hands slid over the heated planes of his chest and shoulders and she pushed his shirt away.

Nipples, Molly decided, were vastly underrated. His were such a prime example too. She leaned down to tease the flat, taut nipple with her bottom lip.

Finally, _finally_, his hands swept up over her back as he shuffled closer. His mouth grazed the shell of her ear as his fingers blazed a trail up her spine to release her bra. Excellent, one less thing to worry about. She dragged her tongue across one nipple, then another. Really _truly_ excellent nipples, for a bloke.

His hand came up to cup her face as he eased her back onto her haunches. Oh so carefully he drew the straps of her bra down, avoiding the dressing on her chest. It dropped to the floor and he returned to glance a feather-light fingertip across it.

He seemed almost troubled as he inspected it. "My aversion to kissing aside, Molly, I swear to you: when this has healed I will worship your every scar with my mouth." And, as if to prove the point, he tilted her face to kiss the hollow of her cheek, below her burn and lifted her injured hand to his mouth, to pass the ghost of a kiss over the dressing. Then his gaze turned back to her breasts and with a wicked twist of his lips his hands reached out for her, cupped them, measured their weight and then, finally, he lowered his mouth to her nipple. His fixation with her breasts eased her mind about her bizarre thing for his nipples. At least, in that regard, they were equally bent.

Christ, she needed to get her jeans of that instant.

In that, they seemed to be of one mind. Both dropped their hands to the fastenings of their respective trousers, they worked quickly and silently to press the garments down and off. Molly had dragged off her knickers with her jeans; Sherlock hadn't been wearing any.

It struck her as odd that she'd spent so long being anxious over what he thought of her that when it all sort of culminated (as it was at that moment) she felt nothing but a wicked sort of power as she dropped onto her back and spread her knees for him.

None of her customary 'first time' fears were present. She didn't fear for a second that he wouldn't care for a bare pussy. That he'd think her whorish for giving in. That he'd find her, in some way, sub-standard. Her lack of fear was almost peculiar, but perhaps could be explained by the nervous heat in his eyes.

Oh, she might be the one utterly exposed, but as he reverently drew a single knuckle through her wet flesh she also knew she was in control. His spare hand was wrapped around the thick and heavy length of his cock and Molly suspected she'd never seen anything more beautiful than the steady cadence he used to work his own flesh.

In an instant his hand was withdrawn from between her legs, his corded thighs pressed hard up against the soft skin of her own as he passed the thick head of his shaft over the place where she so desperately wanted him. He sank into her, barely. She had so little of what she needed, of _him_, that she feared she'd start to sob.

Her hips bucked up off the bed and he stilled her with one hand spanning her belly, pressing her down into the mattress.

"Please," his eyes screwed shut, "Molly, just... I don't know if I..." Each and every line of his face belied a sort of torture, a pain she didn't understand.

Something was amiss. It wasn't until he withdrew what little he'd allowed her and came across her stomach with a few deft pumps of his fist, that she realised how utterly they had buggered up. _She'd_ buggered up.

Sherlock staggered back, horror dawning on his face.

Molly primly closed her knees and rushed to reassure him. "It's fine. It's not the worst thing in the world, Sherlock. I mean, there's famine and murder and... I don't know, teenagers who wear their trousers too low. This is nothing. We can have another crack if you'd like. Later, maybe. And let's not forget, at least one of us got off."

_Oh, brilliant speech Molly. They'll have you at Toastmasters before too long_. The words were wasted.

All she could do was watch as his face hardened and his nostrils flared with disdain. He cupped his softening shaft with one hand and stooped to pick up his shirt, which he tossed to her from a distance. He meant for her to clean the hot mess settling in the gentle curve between her hips.

"I am truly sorry, Molly. I'll..." he swallowed the rest of his sentence as he gathered clean clothes from his wardrobe and backed toward the door. "I'll shower upstairs. Give you some space."

"Sherlock!" she was pleading now, completely at a loss as to how she could make this horridly awkward situation better. "It's not necessary, I'm fine. It happe-"

He had already stepped into the corridor and closed the door on her.

Given the situation, Molly knew that only one course of action was open to her. She passed her hands over her face and began to cry in earnest.

Hardly any time had passed when she heard the front door shut, Sherlock had left her alone in the flat. Again.

It took thirty minutes for her to shed enough tears to feel comfortable dragging her body to the shower, where she removed all traces of both Sherlock and her tears.

Was there something wrong with her? First John, now Sherlock. Was she the anti-Adler?! The sort of woman who so failed to entice men that they could scarcely see any sexual act with her through to the end?

Well, at least her bags were packed. Molly secured a towel around her chest and stepped into the bedroom.

She calculated that, if she put a rush on it, she could be at home and in her own bed before sunrise.

It was her last complete thought before a thick black fabric bag was drawn over her head and a sharp blow cracked down on her temple.

**A/N**: Gosh. Sexytimes are always so nerve-wracking to send out into the ether! I usually end up plagued with doubt and fear (_what if they figure out just how obsessed I am with Benedict's nipples?!_). Not to mention the fact that you know your life has taken a turn for the worst when you find yourself Googling 'come versus cum'. Nonetheless, many thanks for any feedback left up to this point. Please feel free to leave more!


	8. About As Bad As They Can Reasonably Get

**About As Bad As They Can Reasonably Get**

Sherlock glared down at his phone as his fingers beat out a gentle tattoo upon the kitchen table.

Perhaps he should have used more thought when composing the message. Returning to find her gone - her bags _had_ already been packed - had had an adverse affect on his wits. Were it not for the lingering scent of her, of _them_, in his room he might be forgiven for thinking what had passed between them had been a horrid psychotic episode. But it had happened.

A brief inspection had shown that the bed had been made, her bags neatly removed... ...and yet the heat and shame continued to burn low in his gut. His skin flushed at the memory.

He opened his inbox and reread the message.

_Molly, return to 221b_

Awful. What sort of thing did a man say in the wake of... bad sex? Did that even qualify? Was there a minimum level of penetration to be met?

He typed a further addition to his message and hit 'send': _Please._ Sensory overload seemed like the neatest explanation. If he packaged it prettily enough Molly would have no choice but to accept his words and return. He'd put her back in John's room. Surely by now they'd both be cured of the idiotic desire to become lovers. Sherlock had known all along he was ill-suited to be anyone's lover, now he had irrefutable proof. He just wasn't that sort of man... or much of a man at all, apparently.

It was hard to say where it went wrong. His physiological reactions had all been on course. And then he'd looked down and she'd been spread and keenly smiling up at him. Not a smile he'd ever seen before. A smile of confidence, open and willing and for once his skills at deduction were utterly useless. There was nothing to glean from her face or disposition. In that moment, Molly was wholly his and utterly honest in her desire. And there he'd been, nothing more than a boy trying to fit in, to be normal... To sink into the heat of her, to be what they both needed.

He hadn't reckoned on how she'd feel around him, how he'd feel. How utterly assaulted and strangely bewildered he'd become.

How shamefully wonderful he'd felt as he mindlessly came across her soft pale skin.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it. Molly simply needed to return, they could exchange a few painful and awkward words and be done with the whole sticky (Sherlock winced) affair.

* * *

_The next time I am abducted,_ Molly mentally sniped, _I shall insist upon knickers._

True, she'd been unconscious at the time, but honestly, what class of criminals was she working with?

Her vision was still obscured by a dense black cloth and her body was wrapped in what she guessed might be the top sheet from Sherlock's bed. It had a certain 1000 thread count feel about it. For a man who barely slept, he had very discerning tastes when it came to linen. It was a small mercy, she supposed, that her wet towel had been replaced by the sheet. Mind, there was still a definite draft about her bottom.

As far as she could tell, she hadn't been interfered with in any way. Well, nothing more than that knock to the head, which still hurt quite a bit.

If she'd had a fraction of Sherlock's capacity to deduce, that draft alone would have told her something. Width of the gap beneath the door, scent of seasonal pollen, above ground, third storey... But no, she had nothing. Not a bloody thing.

She was cold, she was sitting on concrete. She'd heard her phone message alert (the meow and purr of a kitten) go off a short while ago, but it had been in a nearby room.

Molly's hands were secured behind her back with multiple cable ties. Some care had been taken to ensure that they didn't cut into her skin. Her shoulders had started to burn, she wasn't sure how long she could maintain the position before her arms went utterly dead.

It might have been a perfect opportunity to reflect upon the disaster that her day had been, but she really didn't have the heart. Sherlock's cold rejection had cut her to the wick. Watching him toss his shirt at her with the silent command that she clean up what was, essentially, _his_ mess had left an ache in her chest that still lingered.

What the Hell had happened?! Things had been going so well... ...right up until the moment that they went horridly _horridly_ wrong.

No. Molly was not going to think about that. Given her abduction she felt that she had more than enough trauma on her plate. That one could be filed away until later, when Sherlock came to fetch her. Which he would. Because he was _Sherlock_ and that is what he _did_.

Hardly a handful of seconds passed before she heard the clipped approach of a pair of heels. Her complete lack of situational awareness (and her restrained situation) made it difficult for her to move far, she had no choice but to sit stiff-spined and vaguely nauseous as the black sack was gently removed from her head. It stuck for a brief second, matted and plastered to her head with a small volume of dried blood.

She sat in what might be described as an 'industrial conversion'. One of those hideously trendy loft-type flats that was all modern design and polished concrete. The room was sparsely furnished, it had been cleared to make it an appropriate holding cell, but an open door revealed an ensuite which suggested that it might be a bedroom. A futon dominated the far end of the room and a single potted ficus sat by the glass wall. At least she'd have it for company if they meant to keep her in the room for any length of time.

The sack had been removed by a woman, the only new addition to the room. She stood quite tall, but it was hard to gauge from Molly's sitting position. Molly had quite an eye for picking out the details of a person, things like age and ethnicity were all things that she was trained to spot. The woman had deceptively well-maintained skin, not necessarily from surgery, simply years of care and (expensive) cosmetics. Molly would say late forties, possibly fifties. It helped that she was no stranger to a makeup bag. Her face was made up in a way complimented the dramatic sweep of her aristocratic features. She wore a classically cut charcoal pant-suit and her inky hair was swept into a severe chignon.

For all that, Molly could still make out a few minor imperfections, a scuff at the toe of her expensive heels, the few strands of white hair growing at her temple, suggesting it was past time she visited her hairdresser.

Not that Molly could talk, she was wrapped in a bath towel, with hair that had dried naturally (ugh) and something that resembled whisker burn between her breasts.

"I had rather hoped they'd bring you in something other than a sheet," she dropped the black bag and moved sleekly over to the futon. She perched on the edge and crossed her legs at the ankle as she eyed Molly. "Still," she waved an expressive hand about, "what is it that they say? 'Pay bananas, get monkeys'. Your pictures hardly do you justice. You're in need of a tutorial at the Debenham's cosmetic counter. Still, there's something to be said for a clear complexion and a gentle flush. Though I do shudder to think what has brought it on."

Molly remained quite. Abduction was bad, abduction by the criminal element's answer to Trinny and Sussanah was unacceptable.

"Not talking? Well, I'm sure I shall cope. That's not what you're here for. Would you care to know why I have detained you?"

"If you'd be so kind," Molly kept her voice level.

"Would you care to start with introductions?"

"You know who I am."

"I'm trying to be polite."

"It's a little late in the piece," irritation began to edge into her words.

"Very well, Dr Hooper. You may call me Jacqueline. Or Jim."

"Moriarty?" Well, she hadn't seen _that_ coming.

"One and the same," Moriarty passed a prim hand over her knee, brushing away imaginary lint. "Jacqueline is the feminine of Jacob, a variation on James... Convoluted, I confess, but the name has stuck ever since my years in education. I used it as a nom de plume."

"And I'm here to lure Sherlock?"

Jacqueline smiled indulgently as she shook her head, "Not quite. I have observed his stilted and, frankly, appalling pursuit of you and I deem it to be of little benefit to my cause. The more time he spends on you, the less he dedicates to finding me. I wish for Sherlock Holmes to attend me, you have proven to be an obstacle."

"He'll come at any rate," Molly wriggled her wrists, "He'll come for me."

"Unlikely. He thinks you left in a fit of pique."

"He'll know. He always does."

"Your bags were packed when they took you, I assure you, the boy is not coming. Not for some time."

She was right, of course, Molly had damned herself. Timing and circumstance were stacked against her. In the wake of their ill-fated episode Sherlock was far more likely to believe she's simply left of her own volition. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes, but she had no intention of allowing them to spill.

"Oh don't look like somebody ate your cat," Jacqueline stood and brushed out her trousers, "I've simply removed you from an untenable situation. You should thank me. You may wash your hands of this whole mess. Speaking of hands, would you like yours untied? Gregory shall be in shortly to free them. Of course, like all things in life, there is a price. You will have to take a tranquilliser. Nothing serious, just a few little pills. By the time you wake this whole ordeal could very well be over."

Over? Molly's stomach turned. Would it be 'over' in the same way Richard Brook's life was? "How did you get to Brook, how did you make him do such terrible things?"

She paused at the door and turned back to Molly, a sadness fell across her face that aged her. Molly reassessed her age, late fifties, perhaps even sixties. "Richard was... regrettable. I had hoped that his brilliance would come to something. I was blind to him, he was jealous, he was mad in ways that I am only just beginning to fully comprehend. Three years I kept him close, taught him, mentored him."

"Then... he found out about the murders."

"Oh clever Molly, you've been doing your research. Incorrect, I'm afraid, but you get full points for effort. Richard did kill those girls. I knew then that I could no longer support him. I had empowered him too much, had too much faith and he had killed. I have... connections. I made the investigations go away, but in exchange he had to also vanish. Until very recently Richard Brook had been nothing but a failed project, one I'd left to languish in my past."

"What changed?"

Jacqueline's face hardened, "He took my name. He attacked my... Attacked Sherlock."

Richard had been such a wild and devious evil in their lives... And yet at one point even she had been taken in by his charms. It seemed that they were charms he had honed with decades of practice. Still, when it had counted all his charm had come to nothing. He had died that day and now it seemed that Moriarty had been dragged into their mess. Yet if she had been behind the attack on Molly's flat, if she had orchestrated Molly's kidnapping from Sherlock's very home... Well, she was no longer an innocent party.

The door to the room clicked shut. Molly sighed. She'd forgotten to ask for knickers.

* * *

John's deductive skills had developed quite a lot since he'd met Sherlock, but they were still far from finely tuned. Lucky for him, he didn't need to call upon them. The new bullet holes in the wall (truly, some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and he still had to live with _this_), Molly's absence and Sherlock's general demeanour told him all he needed to know.

"I take it things didn't go well with Molly?" He asked as he shrugged out of his bomber jacket.

"Not especially." Sherlock was lying flat on his back, legs extended up the wall as he steepled his fingers beneath his chin.

"Any particular thing that you did wrong?"

"Oh, no. I should say just about all of it."

John wasn't fooled. Sherlock could feign nonchalance all he wanted, but the agitated twitches on his face and the faint tremor of his hands went beyond his typical restlessness. "I know this isn't exactly... Well. It's not my area but I -"

"Not your area? How many women must one 'get off' with to make it his area?"

"Just trying to help, Sherlock."

Sherlock seemed to suck in a few fortifying breaths before bringing himself to sit upright. "I'm not enough for her," he tried - and failed - to deliver the words as though they were nothing but trivial fact.

John couldn't help but let his eyes drift down over Sherlock's waist... No, that wasn't what he'd meant. John had caught Sherlock naked once or twice so he knew that it wasn't an issue of -

"Don't be crude, John. I failed her as a lover. Hardly surprising, mildly disappointing for her though. I simply can't meet her needs, emotionally speaking. To be honest, I wasn't much scratch physically either."

Tamping down the rising desire to box Sherlock about the ears, John moved to an armchair. What Sherlock didn't understand was that Molly wasn't stupid. She wasn't brilliant on Sherlock's scale, but then who was? Molly knew precisely what Sherlock had on offer and - despite all reason - she still wanted him.

Poor Molly. She hadn't had much luck with men lately and he had to own part of that guilt. Though, in some bizarre way, it had strengthened the bond between them. John fished his mobile out of his pocket and opened a new text message.

"What are you doing?" Sherlock's head perked up.

"Finding her, asking if she's okay. The things you should have done by now."

"She's at her apartment, like any good creature of habit she will have returned there to console herself. Mycroft has been surveilling it since the attack, so she should be perfectly safe. And I tired, she won't answer my texts. Oh... actually... Brilliant!" He sprang to his feet, hands clasped in excitement. "If _you_ request it, she'll return. Bring her home. Quickly. Tell her something is wrong."

John slowly lifted his head. "You mean to say that she would have, at any time, been perfectly safe to return home?"

"Of course," Sherlock nodded as though it were the most obvious of facts.

"But you kept her here."

"It suited me. She cooks, she cleans. Her tea and coffee making skills are passable."

John wasn't fooled. Both he and Sherlock (if the situation was dire) were capable of those basic tasks. Even Molly's dressings were a feeble excuse, she'd have managed those on her own. Still, John wasn't going to force any grand admission from Sherlock in his current state. He doubted Sherlock had slept much the previous evening, or the one before that, and though there seemed to be a rather widely accepted theory that he did not need to rest, John knew differently. "Get your head down, Sherlock. Go to her tomorrow and sort this mess out."

He watched as Sherlock's eyes slid toward his bedroom. Reluctance was written clearly across his face. Oh, lovely. Whatever had happened had been traumatic enough to shake even Sherlock.

His resolve hardened. Even if it was only a single night, he'd buy Molly that brief period of solitude. They could deal with the fallout in the morning. Actually, no. _Sherlock_ could deal with it.

John rattled off a quick text, telling Molly to sleep well and marshal her forces.

* * *

The staring contest with her keeper, Gregory, was not going well.

It was the second time in God only knew how many hours that he'd come to her wielding tranquillisers. The first time had been just after Moriarty's departure. He'd forced her to swallow the pills, then dragged a chair over to the futon where she sat and intently watched her as the pills had taken hold. She'd needed no more than fifteen minutes to feel the irresistible pull of sleep.

The first time through she'd fought against the drowsiness, intimidated by Gregory's size and preference for black leather. "Don't fight it, little one," he'd crooned in a roughened voice as he removed her cable ties, "You ain't my type."

_Excellent,_ Molly had thought through the haze, _Another man who finds me lacking in sexual allure._

Though that had not quite been what he meant (what he _did_ mean was that he preferred his women to be men). Beyond that, it didn't like the most sound medical reasoning to tranquillise a woman with a concussion. But what would she know? She was only a doctor. Molly had fallen into a heavy sleep with a scowl.

This time around she was ten minutes down and desperate to close her eyes. Still, she fought. Staring sleepily into Gregory's muddy brown eyes. There had to be something she could _do_. If only she wasn't so damn tired...

In another room she heard her phone begin to purr once more. It didn't help her gather her sense of time. It seemed to be dusk, but without knowing what they'd given her it was hard to say how long she'd slept. Her phone battery had been known to last up to three days, but that was usually due to disuse. When she'd woken earlier she had been busting to use the loo, but by the same token, she had had little to drink since her dinner with Sherlock, so she was quite possibly dehydrated.

Her head throbbed with a chemically induced headache, she groaned and lifted her legs to the futon, settling on to her back.

Satisfied that the window of opportunity for Molly to vomit up the pills had passed and that she'd remain neutralised for the time it took the tranquillisers to run their course, Gregory got to his feet and offered her a little wave. Bastard was going to check her phone. She rolled onto her side and closed her eyes.

The door shut and her desperate efforts to remain lucid very nearly failed, but she managed to find enough momentum to roll from the futon to the floor. The impact jolted her awake, marginally, giving her enough drive to crawl toward the only other thing in the room: the plant.

One of the more bizarre (and tragic) cases in her life had been the death of a pregnant woman who had developed a hormonal craving for potting mix. Odd, but not unique among pregnant women. While potting mix was by no means safe to consume (given it's ability to breed bacteria and disease) it had not been the potting mix, per se, that had caused complications. Rather, the high level of charcoal in the mix had rendered the woman's preeclampsia treatment void, absorbing it during the digestive process. Tragic, but useful in Molly's predicament.

Molly clumsily raked her fingers through the pot plant, catching them on hard chunks. She could have clapped with excitement - had she had the fine motor skills. Never had she imagined she'd be so pleased to dust off and gnaw on a handful of charcoal. She only hoped that it wasn't a case of too little, too late. With any luck she was in time for the charcoal to set to work absorbing the drug in her stomach. She made her way back to the futon and tried to settle once more as she sucked the gritty mess from her teeth.

Her eyes flittered shut, but she prayed she'd be able to keep the exhaustion at bay.

The door opened as Gregory peeked in, talking into his mobile as he looked on. "... enough to take down a horse. And she ain't much more'n a slip of a thing. Gimme ten to make sure it's taken, then I'll be down for a burner. Reckon she won't miss me for a few."

* * *

Going to bed was just about the last thing that Sherlock wanted to do, but the lounge room had become somewhat inhospitable. John simply sat around, tapping away at his keyboard and staring at him as though he were a puppy that had done something unpleasant to the rug.

He wanted to remind him that Molly had left of her own volition, but that seemed to him to be something of a half-truth. He _may_ have given her cause to leave. Still, that was scarcely grounds to drum him out of the common areas of the flat.

Maybe sleep wasn't the worst thing he could do. A few hours at least.

As he entered his room her scent still hit him with all the force of a running into a wall. It would fade, he supposed. But the thought didn't soothe him as it should. Sherlock stalked toward his bed as he began to undress. Enemy territory, even his own bed wasn't safe anymore. It had become just another place, another way, for him to fail the people he cared for.

He angrily whipped back the duvet and fisted his hand in the sheets...

_Sheet._ Singular.

In that moment he almost wished that he could be a simple man of middling mental acuity. The sort of man who could reasonably assume that Molly had taken the sheet out of sentiment.

But he wasn't and she hadn't.

* * *

**A/N**: Eating dirt is a terrible idea. Don't do it.

Do: leave feedback. I adore it. I read all comments rather greedily and try to take on board all suggestions!

Also, I am now on Tumblr as Becisvolatile...


	9. That Didn't Look Like Love To Me

**That Didn't Look Like Love To Me **

Running through the Inner suburbs, wrapped in nothing but a sheet wasn't exactly how Molly had hoped to spend her evening. But she wouldn't be too quick to complain, it certainly beat the alternative: spending it drugged and unconscious on Moriarty's futon.

Circumstance had conspired to give her a small window of opportunity while Gregory, her keeper, had gone down for a cigarette. Drowsy and clumsy she'd stumbled through the flat and made a break for the front exit of the building. It wasn't until she was half a block away, stumbling forward unsteadily on her feet, that she felt a measure of safety.

Bystanders jumped out of her way, regarding her as though she were one of the city's homeless, drugged out or just mentally incompetent. Fine, she didn't care. At least in full public view she was unlikely to be captured.

It might have been nice had somebody stopped her. What was the city coming to when nobody stopped to check on a young woman, clearly in distress? She felt her faith in humanity slipping. As it was, it took her three blocks to find a police car idling at a red light and throw herself across the bonnet.

A little dramatic, perhaps, but it had been that sort of day.

Still, an hour later, Lestrade didn't seem to think she'd been dramatic at all as he paced the length of her bed in A & E. Molly continued to page through her mountain of admission paperwork. "This is excessive," she sighed as she initialed a page.

"Two hospitalisations in a single week? Yes, I'd class this as excessive."

Molly passed him the clipboard and held out her hand. "I'm here at your behest. I was quite content to just go home. Can I use your phone now?"

"To call Holmes?"

She arched an eyebrow, "Nice try, I need to call John. He'll be worried."

Lestrade crossed his arms, his jaw ticked twice in quick succession, "Don't act like this doesn't have Sherlock's name written all over it."

"I can't imagine what you mean..." Molly plucked at the dirt beneath her nails. "I don't suppose you've had any luck with the Moriarty lead?"

"I won't leave this be, Molly."

What struck Molly as odd what how he hadn't figured it out already, how hard could it be to watch 221b? Sherlock moved so freely that even the most basic of surveillance would come up with results. Unless... "Somebody has put restrictions on you, haven't they?"

He tossed his cell phone toward Molly, suddenly finding the linoleum fascinating.

"Don't suppose you know John's number?" Molly only knew two numbers, her own and the switch at Barts.

"Address book. The boys found the flat you mentioned, your things were there, nothing else. They're dropping them off on the foyer, I'll go fetch them while you call."

She watched him leave, allowing for a full ten seconds before she scrolled through to John's number, he picked up after the first ring.

"Greg," his voice came calm, controlled and with a steely edge, "Have a bit of a situation on my hands. Molly's been -"

"It's me."

John's voice was muted as he spoke away from the phone, "It's her. Yes, Molly." She heard the intelligible rumble of Sherlock's voice as he spoke to John on the other end. "No, fine. She's fine." Then back into the phone, "Tell me you're fine."

"I'm fine."

"Sher- no, no. Let go. She's fine. She's with Lestrade." Into the phone again. "Did Lestrade take you?"

She was struggling to keep up, the last vestiges of the tranquilliser refusing to relinquish their hold on her skull. "John, please pick one conversation. Me or him. I'm concussed, there's only so much I can deal with."

"Concussed? Lestrade concussed you?"

"What? No. No! Gregory hit me."

"Gregory?"

"Works for Moriarty."

"Mor- Wait, now I'm confused. Where were you?"

"Lambeth." Molly wrapped her spare arm around her waist, she wore a borrowed pair of scrubs and they did little to ward off the chill running up and down her spine.

"And at present you are...?"

"In hospital."

"Because...?"

"Blunt force trauma to the head and a nasty cocktail of drugs. Oh, and the dirt."

Seconds ticked away in silence before John finally spoke. "So it's a bad concussion, then?"

_Getting worse by the second._

Molly's sad little sigh belied her exhaustion. "Can we talk about this when I get home? I doubt they'll keep me long. Lestrade can drive me home."

"Er, yes. We'll see you here then."

"_My_ home. Bring milk and food."

"Molly, do you really think that's wise? You need to be somewhere that you can-"

Molly hit 'end' and dropped the phone down beside her.

* * *

Sherlock unlocked Molly's flat and let himself in. Despite John's warnings that he'd be unwelcome, he'd come anyway. John had fought hard to be the one to come, citing far too many reasons why it would be unwise for Sherlock to see Molly. Still, he was used to being unwanted, at least maybe now he wouldn't be on such uncertain footing with Molly.

John had estimated Molly's return at roughly 9pm, Sherlock knew better. She'd have downplayed her injuries, so that would push it out until 11pm, then there'd be Lestrade's lecture in the car, it would run longer than the transit, so they'd be sitting down on the street for a good fifteen minutes before she came up. Lestrade wouldn't come up. He was still driving toward an ill-advised reconciliation with his wife and was self-aware enough to know that he both fancied Molly and was a sucker for a damsel in distress. He wouldn't risk the temptation. Sherlock sneered into the dark of Molly's kitchen as he dropped his load of groceries and used a remote to turn on her heating.

The world needed to stop chasing after and interfering with Molly Hooper. That was _his_ role.

Her broken window had been fixed and an invoice sat on her kitchen bench. Sherlock slipped it into his coat pocket, then dropped his coat over the back of Molly's couch. Even if her insurance covered it, she'd be out the cost of her policy excess. No, he didn't care to have her inconvenienced any further than she'd already been.

He took his time unpacking the groceries. He'd been uncertain what to buy so he'd gone for a mixture of junky comfort food and wholesome options. He opened the fridge and crouched to drop a bag of baby spinach in the vegetable drawer. That was where he found the bag of blood he'd left in Molly's keeping just prior to his 'death'. Well, not the exact bag. He'd replaced that one for a bag of A pos just a few hours after she'd left it in her fridge.

He almost hated that she still had it, hated that it sat in the drawer, a physical manifestation of Molly's enduring faith in him. Just once, it would be nice to see Molly or John fail him, betray him.

Just once, he'd like to know he wasn't the only one capable of hurting his friends.

He slammed the fridge and left the remaining bags on the bench, they contained only an assortment of sweets and crisps, nothing that would spoil.

An hour later, Sherlock had settled into the box seat tucked into her new bay window and had a front row seat as he watched Molly and Lestrade exchange heated words in the front seat of his car. She waved clumsily as she tried to get her point across but whatever had happened to her left her with poor spatial awareness, causing her to occasionally smack the passenger window as she spoke. Lestrade was still speaking as Molly threw up her hands, opened the door and dragged her things out. She gave him a curt wave goodbye and marched toward the building.

Sherlock wasn't entirely certain how to position himself, he didn't want to scare her, but then she'd proven to be made of sterner stuff than he'd first thought. He didn't want to upset her either, but recent history suggested that her displeasure was inevitable. It seemed safest to remain where he was, barely lit by the street lamp outside.

"John?" Molly called as she shuffled up the stairs of her flat, "I forgot to ask, but please tell me you grabbed some licorice. I could murder an entire packet of-"

"Black Knight," Sherlock jumped up to relieve Molly of her bags, "John said you liked it. There's two packs on the bench."

Almost immediately he regretted his decision to come. It was all too much to witness the suffering that he had caused. The slow widening of her eyes, the defeated lines about her mouth and how damn small she seemed, dwarfed by her own coat and an oversized pair of scrubs. Her face was a mess. The burn, as prominent as ever, was now balanced out by the swollen, darkening skin of her temple. Her hairline was matted with dried blood and though the wound itself was tiny it had bled enough to fuel a peculiar type of rage in his gut. His fault. All of it.

"Wh-where is John?" Molly cast her eyes around the flat desperately, as if waiting for her knight in shining armour to materialise.

Why had he thought, however briefly, that he could do anything for her that John couldn't?

"I should imagine he's at home periodically checking his phone, waiting for you to demand he come and oust me," he dumped Molly's bags where he stood and crossed his arms.

"Lucky him," she sidestepped the bags and moved to the kitchen where she began to ferret around for the licorice. "My phone has gone flat."

It seemed easier to keep some distance between them, so he opted to perch on the edge of the sofa while she slowly went through the motions of making a cup of tea. One cup of tea only. Two strips of licorice hung from the corner of her mouth as she worked.

He was happy to observe while she worked but, when she attempted to pour the boiled kettle with shaking hands, he had to intervene. "Do us both a favour and sit down before you do yourself any further harm."

Molly snorted as she snagged the box of licorice and moved toward her room. Sherlock could only follow with her tea. His normal drive to to question, to investigate, seemed lacking. Oh, he'd find who was responsible. But, somehow, making things right with Molly took precedence.

She jabbed one finger towards her bedside table. "Set it there. Thank you for the groceries. Thank John too. Call tomorrow and we can talk about Moriarty."

He'd been dismissed. He watched her toss her jacket aside and toe off her shoes as she moved toward her ensuite. He didn't like the thought of her showering alone in her state, but he couldn't very well say that. Instead, he sank to the floor beside her bed and listened intently as he mentally traced her movements through the small room.

* * *

Her anger was misplaced, but overpowering.

In that moment she felt full of spite and hatred and, God, if her limbs didn't feel so feeble she might have tried a little senseless violence to ease her mind. Instead, she attacked her teeth with a toothbrush.

It wasn't Sherlock's fault, she knew that. The groceries were tantamount to a grand gesture on his behalf. And she hated it. Hated knowing how uncomfortable, how against type he must feel running headfirst into what was guaranteed to be an emotional scene with her. But he had, he'd been waiting for her and when she'd dismissed him he'd almost managed to hide the wince of hurt.

She hated that too.

She hated John for letting him come, though he may well have had no say in the matter.

She hated Moriarty for setting events into motion.

She hated Lestrade for pointing out that she lacked healthy adult entanglements (because, who was he to talk?).

She hated her own damn body and its smorgasbord of injuries. She tore her dressings off and stepped into the hot stream of the shower, biting back a small cry as the water hit her burns and, most likely, did a bit of damage there.

She hated so many things, even though she was completely without right to do so.

Her nose and eyes watered as she turned her back to the spray, giving her screaming burns some reprieve. Pink water carried the blood from her tangled hair. Shampoo and conditioner seemed beyond her limited capabilities at that moment, so she simply satisfied herself with rinsing her hair clear of blood and debris. Face wash was pretty much the same story, she simply applied her Jo Malone body gel to the task. For the price, it should be an all-purpose product anyway.

Dead people, Molly decided as she stepped from the shower and gingerly wrapped herself in a fluffy mint coloured towel, had the right idea. This wasn't about suicidal ideation or anything horrid like that. It was simply that, once you were dead, all discourse, accusations and guilt stopped. Can't flog a dead horse. Or a human.

Well, _most_ people wouldn't flog a dead human. Most people left the dead alone.

Yet here they were, two people who liked to poke at dead and broken things trying to work out what it all _meant_. How had she never realised what a terrible idea that was? Worse still when applied to one's romantic life.

_Let it go, Molly, before the rot sets in..._

If she had been surprised to find Sherlock in her home, she was gobsmacked to find him still sitting on the floor, back braced against her bed, as she exited the bathroom. Why was it that a man who had such a knack for leaving when she desperately wanted him to stay was happy to stay when all that she desired was his absence?

"You couldn't just leave." The statement was softly spoken, but shook with a rage she had no entitlement to.

He didn't stand. Just swept his eyes over her towel-clad form, catching and assessing each wound and bruise. Maybe even the ones she didn't think were showing. "I'm sorry, Molly. I truly am."

Her hand cut through the air, lazily dismissing the apology. He was sorry for her abduction, sorry for something that wasn't even his fault. "And what about before I was taken?"

He angrily raked his fingers through his hair, his face shifting into some semblance of disgust. "You are captured and abused by criminal masterminds and your biggest issue is that I'm rubbish in bed?"

She actually had to laugh at that, it was a bitter, hollow sort of laugh. "I've had rubbish shags, Sherlock. You aren't one of them. What you are is a poor excuse for a friend. You didn't so much as look back once when you left me in that bed."

Sherlock shot to his knees, grabbing Molly by the wrist and dragging her close. "I'm trying, Molly." His tone was clipped, angry. "Isn't that enough? You wanted me in your bed, I tried. You wanted a friend, I'm trying."

"Trying? This is trying? You leave and you leave and you_ leave_. My mouth is too small, my breasts are too small and now I worry that my heart is too small, because try as I might I can't fit you in there, not if you won't come willingly." Even on his knees he barely had to look up at her. Molly's hand pressed against his chest, but he refused to budge. "_I_ tried, Sherlock. I really tried. Against your will, against your advice and now I'm coming to realise that the kindest things you ever did for me were the words and the barbs and the cutting deductions." She pressed harder against the flex of his chest, unable to choke down a small cry of frustration. "I was too stupid to see them for what they were. Each one a tiny escape clause, a reason to walk away from you and, oh, how I excelled at ignoring them. Sh-Sherlock, _please_, just let me go. I'm exhausted. This whole thing is exhausting!" She tried again to move him, her short nails trying to score him through his shirt, deter him, repel him. "I don't want it anymore... I don't want you."

_Lie._ Of course she wanted him. She just wouldn't survive him.

It was safer by far to feign indifference now than risk unimaginable hurt later. His hands slid up her calves, up her legs. The struggle dislodged her towel, leaving it to drape over his arms as she fought back tears. He'd already stripped her bare, she didn't want to be naked too. But somehow her nudity barely registered. His face settled between her breasts as he held her tight, he took advantage of the situation, rubbing one cheek sorrowfully against the curve of her breast. His shoulders shuddered and Molly felt something warm trickle across her skin.

She refused to believe that Sherlock Holmes could cry.

Where she found the strength to push him away again, she'd never know. It wasn't that the final shove was powerful, she had such little strength remaining, but Sherlock was drained. Defeated. He sat back on his haunches and turned his face away.

Fine. Molly slipped naked into her bed and pulled the covers up to her chest, she turned her own face into her pillow as her tears threatened to spill.

She had always been prepared to have her own heart broken. What wounded her was having to watch Sherlock's do the very same thing.

She heard a rustle and click as he rose to turn off the bedroom light and assumed that was the end of it.

She was wrong, of course.

A moment later she listened as he sank to the floor beside her bed and gently ran two fingers down the length of her arm. He turned her palm up and pressed a simple kiss to it, then dragged it up to his hair.

That was how they fell asleep, him like a faithful pet and her twisting and stroking the silken tumble of his hair, as if she were the master of the piece. As if she had any measure of control.

It was such a pretty fantasy.

* * *

Sherlock woke feeling as though someone had drilled steel rods into his neck and spine. That said, it was still one of the better rests he'd ever had. He stretched and twisted, turning back toward the bed to find Molly.

She was still asleep, one hand hanging limply off the side of the bed. The bedding had shifted during the night, slipping below her breasts and gathering between her thighs, leaving one out-turned knee bare to him. The central heating had warmed the room to a pleasant state.

He'd forgotten himself last night. Damn near begged. All without making a case for her continued interest. Why it mattered now that she remain enamoured of him, he wasn't sure. He only knew that it _did_ matter.

It mattered quite a lot.

The need to prove himself, to prove that he wasn't some destructive force that tore through lives without leaving anything of value... the need was overpowering.

What he could offer was trivial, but it was _something_ and now, despite hours spent counselling himself against this very course, he knew that if he didn't sway Molly, he'd never have her on side again.

He gently slid one long finger along her exposed thigh... catching and dragging the sheet as he went. This much he could do. Wanted to do. His shoulders tensed with anticipation.

He could give her pleasure, some token of his desire. If he was safely removed from the equation (which, when the thought upon it, had been the problem in the first place) all that remained was his, not inconsiderable, knowledge of female anatomy.

The sheet fell away and his breath hitched. Perfect. Even damaged and bruised she was more than he deserved. The scent of orange blossom sifted up to him from her heated skin. Sherlock set his knee on the mattress between her thighs and hauled himself up above her.

She was slow to wake, a lush package of tousled hair and, God, those breasts... And lower, her soft flat flawless stomach, the gentle dip between her hips and the sweet pink flash of his goal just visible between her parted thighs.

Was he ambushing her? Abusing her weakened state?

Of course. He needed every advantage he could get his hands on. He gripped one thigh, marvelling at the reach of his hand, and opened her legs wider as he allowed his thumb to brush through the flushed pink folds of her pussy.

"Good Morning, Molly," he murmured as he studied her shamelessly.

"Sherlock?" She sounded drowsy.

"If you mean to stop me," he spread her thighs further so that they could accommodate the span of his shoulders, "Say no." As he said 'no' his bottom lip glanced against her sensitive flesh.

Her breath hitched, she pressed a shaking palm to her temple. "No?"

Utterly lacking in conviction. He looked up with a wolffish grin.

"Say it and mean it."

"N...oh! God!"

Oh, was he meant to have waited for that second rejection? Not likely.

He indulged in a slow, lazy exploration with his tongue. One long sweep, his first taste, a test of sorts, he supposed. Science dictated that a woman taste a certain way, but his mind told him he'd never press his tongue against anything so lush or sweet again. Her thighs pressed against his shoulders and he gripped them tightly to still them, to keep her where he wanted her. He dipped his head again and began in earnest, passing his bottom lip again and again across her clit, creating a wicked sort of friction.

Molly's nails dug into his scalp, pulling as her hips bucked... "Too much!"

It was? He dipped lower, tilting her hips up as he went. No part of her was closed to him, not when they were like this. For his part, he could only grind himself against the bed. his own arousal nothing but an inconvenience not to be acknowledged. He pressed his tongue against her tight channel, just barely lapping against her. This time her hold on his hair loosened, instead her fingers speared out as she tried to push him closer.

This, this was easy. Here he could read her desires, nothing more than a handful of clues and actions all urging him toward what she wanted. God how he wished everything about Molly was this simple. He smiled against her, relishing how wet she'd become. For him. Because of _him_.

"Christ, your mouth Sherlock!" Her hips bucked beseechingly. "Who ever thought it could be used for good?"

Who indeed? He suckled her clit until her bucking turned into a rhythmic rocking. His tongue dipped lower, circling, searching, pressing against her, into her, his nose bumping clumsily against her. She didn't seem to mind. Actually, her rapid breathing, flushed skin and inability to form words seemed to indicate that she was in a very good place indeed.

Excellent.

One leg flailed and found purchase between his shoulder-blades, her toes clenching in the fabric of his shirt as she cried out and came against his tongue. His mouth turned lazy and self-indulgent. It was actually quite pleasant to court such intimacy with a woman when her fingers loosely petted your head and her limbs grew languid and weak.

He dropped a chaste kiss against her stomach and smiled up at her.

Oh, but he _had _done well.

Eventually she shifted, sitting up to hazily run her hand from his hair, down his chest and - Sherlock snatched Molly's wrist.

"No. Not that." Even the barest touch of her fingertips sliding across the length of his cock through his trousers had set him on edge. Did she not understand that this was about _her_? This only worked if he could remain detached.

"You can't be serious." If he hadn't watched her transition from sated to incredulous he'd never have believed it could happen so quickly. Did she really believe he'd be that foolish or masochistic?

He let his face fall blank, desperate to hide his growing sense of panic. Again. He'd fucked up again and he didn't have the faintest clue why.

Molly eyed him with a sickening sort of resignation as she dragged a sheet back over her body. "Leave. I mean it this time."

Sherlock watched as she rolled onto her side and curled in on herself. He took his time picking up his shoes, waiting for her to speak again. To say anything.

He was about to shut her bedroom door when she finally spoke. "Sherlock?"

Finally. He knew, _knew_, she wouldn't be able to let this pass with out examination. "Yes, Molly?"

"Put the kettle on as you leave."

* * *

**A/N: **Just to clear up one thing: I know I come across as quite heartless when it comes to these two. Please don't think I am. I just like breaking pretty things. I like to see them work for their happy ending.

Thanks for feedback and comment left so far, I truly enjoy them!


	10. Cheap Melodrama

**Cheap Melodrama **

Being single was not without benefit. Molly knew that. There was little she enjoyed more than briskly, purposefully, winding her way through the aisles at Tesco, dodging over-laden mothers with unwieldy trolleys and temperamental toddlers, carrying a single basket brimming with luxury items. Brown paper-wrapped bottle, premium scotch filet, exotic fruit (top cover for the cheeses and Terry's Chocolate Orange) and a rather pretentious looking loaf of grain bread all sat prettily in her basket and as long as she didn't remember that she'd be eating them alone, she'd be fine.

True, with all of her injuries she looked like a villainous extra from a _Die Hard _film. And, yes, she had a sneaking suspicion that heartache would set in at any moment (hence the chocolate). But starting the day off on the receiving end of a rather stellar bout of oral sex was not to be sniffed at.

Too bad everything after the fact had soured the event for her.

There had been something empowering, encouraging even, about watching his dark head dipped between her thighs, knowing that every ounce of his energy had been dedicated to her. He'd stayed the night and there he was, devoted and hers and... just lying. Even better, he was lying without ever saying a word.

Did he think she'd be placated by an orgasm (for longer than it took recover her breath, that is)?

Molly stuffed a bag of crisps into her basket.

It wasn't as if she'd asked him to start picking out china patterns. All she'd wanted was his active participation. Was it too much to ask?

Apparently.

A second bag of crisps went sailing into the basket.

"Prefer scampi flavour, myself." The voice came from next to Molly, loud enough, but obscured as the speaker was looking down at her mobile phone.

Mycroft's aide (Anthea?) was, as always, the very picture of professionalism. Molly had to applaud her ability to make the black slacks and matching kimono jacket (Topshop, if she wasn't mistaken) look far more expensive than they were. Obviously Mycroft hadn't managed to beat her electronic dependencies out of her, but she must have possessed some desirable skill for him to keep her on staff.

Molly glanced at her wristwatch. "I don't suppose it's too much to ask to be left alone for, oh, I don't know, 24 hours?"

Anthea gave an indelicate snort and briefly lifted her eyes from her phone. "With your taste in men? Not likely."

"Would it be too much to hope that our meeting here is a coincidence?"

Again, she looked up from her phone, this time she looked almost pitying.

Well, she wasn't going to go quietly. Molly fished her phone out of her pocket and offered Anthea an apologetic smile, "Just a sec, I've got a quick call to make. Then we can be on our way."

John answered on the second ring, "What have you done to him?"

"Since when are we assuming that things are my fault?"

"Statistically speaking, lately, they are," John sounded far from impressed. "Molly, he bought you groceries. He won't even feed himself, but he bought you _food_."

"That wasn't it. He wouldn't," Molly flicked her eyes to a mother and toddler then lowered her voice, "You know. He _wouldn't._ With me."

She could actually hear John rolling his eyes. "The man wouldn't shag you scant hours after you were drugged and escaped from a deadly criminal? Bastard."

"Oh, we're taking sides now?" Molly looked up and gave Anthea a somewhat insincere smile by way of apology.

"Between the two of you? There are no sides. You're as bad as each other. Except, right now, he's armed. So I suppose for safety's sake I'll side with Sherlock."

"What's he doing?"

"Shooting kittens." She turned a peculiar shade of green and nearly lost hold of her basket.

"Not actual kittens, don't be daft." John hastened to clarify matters, "Just a calendar. One of Mrs Hudson's."

Well, that would make sense, wouldn't it? Molly's lips twisted in a guilty little giggle. _At the end of the day, all of Sherlock's problems came back to pussy._

Of course, it was hardly the time to let her indelicate sense of humour run rampant. She sobered up and clutched her phone a little more securely against her ear. "Funnily enough, Sherlock isn't actually the reason for this call."

"He'll be devastated."

Molly chose to ignore John, "Have you met Mycroft's Anthea?" Anthea looked up and gave a little wiggle of her fingers for John.

"Great chest, surgically attached to her mobile?"

"Sounds about right. She's here with me. I suspect she wants something. Let me check..." Molly lowered her phone and arched an eyebrow at Anthea.

"Tea?" Anthea mouthed.

"She wants to have tea."

"It's never just tea with Anthea," John warned. "One minute it's 'one lump or two?' and the next it's about an assassination in Turkmenistan."

Molly had suspected as much, "I doubt she's asking. I just felt it prudent to let you know my whereabouts. Might help you trace my steps when my corpse turns up." Anthea had the good grace not to look too offended. Molly lowered her phone again. "Where are we having tea?"

"Claridge's."

Oh, nice, Molly had always wanted to go there.

"Claridge's, Mayfair," she relayed the location to John.

"Can you get out of it? Are you in a public place?"

Molly narrowed her eyes at Anthea, "I suppose I could try and take her, but I am out of shape. Haven't been for a jog since the drive by at mine. Still, even if I could I doubt I'd be able to best whoever she's got waiting in the wings." Molly tuned her attention once more to Anthea, "You do have people waiting, don't you?"

This time Anthea didn't even bother to look up. "Three men, all very scary."

"Should I be worried?"

"It's tea, Doctor Hooper, nothing to be alarmed about," Anthea said as she took possession of Molly's basket and set it gently on the ground.

John must have heard, because Molly lifted her phone to catch him warning her in a hard voice, "Be alarmed, Molly, be very alarmed."

* * *

John pocketed his phone and moved swiftly downstairs. "Sherlock? Sher-" He ducked back out into the corridor until he heard all live fire cease.

"You still have excellent reflexes," Sherlock observed as he engaged the safety mechanism on the pistol.

"Need them living with you."

"Don't gripe. You thrive on excitement."

"Excitement, yes. But I've been shot before, I don't relish revisiting that level of pain and turmoil."

With the gun safely deposited on the coffee table, John ventured into the room.

"Speaking of pain and turmoil, I presume you have something for me? That is why you came screeching down the stairs like a fishwife... Yes?"

"Molly seems to be in a spot of trouble. Again."

Sherlock's eyes rolled heavenward as he bit his bottom lip. "What is it this time?"

"You needn't sound so put upon," John grabbed Sherlock's coat and tossed it to him, "Anthea's collected her. So, really, this all boils down to her association to you."

A long lazy sweep of his hand dismissed John's scalding. "It always boils down to me with Molly."

"And yet you persist with her. Why is that?"

Sherlock pinned him with a rather scathing look, "What would you have me do? Cut her away?"

"Might be the safest option. Yet here we are and you haven't considered it."

That earned John a bitterly indulgent smile. "I consider everything, John."

"But you won't leave her alone."

"Not much of a choice now, is there?" Sherlock shrugged into his coat and tossed the flat keys to John.

They made it a full fifteen minutes in the cab before John could no longer contain himself. "I just have one question, Sherlock."

"I cannot wait to hear it," His eyes remained fixed on the world beyond the taxi windows.

"Have you considered that you might love Molly?"

_And that, Sherlock 'I consider everything' Holmes, is how you hoist a man by his own petard._

He might have felt smug had he not noticed how white Sherlock's face had turned, how positively ill he looked.

Suddenly, John just felt like a bit of a shit.

* * *

Sometimes a girl just felt underdressed for an occasion. Sometimes it had nothing to do with clothing. She could have been wearing full Kevlar for her first meeting with Moriarty (rather than a bed sheet) and still felt utterly unclothed. It was the same thing again as she nervously stepped into Claridge's and wished for a pretty sundress, or a chic pantsuit. Not that she truly felt it would make one damn bit of difference. If she continued to feel uncomfortable in her own skin, all the clothes in the world wouldn't change that.

What she wouldn't give to be that brazen girl who had wantonly and wickedly writhed naked under the attentions of one Sherlock Holmes. Until, of course, he'd sat back and declined to participate in his own bloody seduction. That had cured her of any notion that she was wanted.

_Really, Molly, you'll have a lifetime of watching Dr Phil to try and sort this out. Perhaps now is not the time to agonise over the humiliating heap that is your sex life..._

Claridge's was the sort of place frequented by only the well-heeled or cashed up tourists. The Foyer boasted some of London's loveliest Art Deco furnishings and Molly felt bolstered by the gentle noise of china and forks clinking softly as the largely female clientele gossiped and confided in polished tones (okay, so there was an abrasive Texan accent somewhere in the far corner of the room, but it was easy enough to ignore).

It was an oddly public meeting place for Mycroft to select. Molly slowed and turned to question Anthea, but it seemed even the tea rooms of Claridge's weren't safe from her electronic sacrilege. Not for the first time, Molly wondered if Anthea wasn't simply addicted to Candy Crush Saga. Surely nobody was so utterly in demand that they couldn't be parted from their phone for just a few minutes?

They arrived at a neatly tucked away table. It had two cream and blue eggshell chairs, Edwarian maybe, and was set with a stunning and expensive array of Wedgewood. Molly wished that she'd worn something a little more feminine than jeans and her favourite cream twinset.

"Will Mycroft be long?" Molly asked as she sank into the plush upholstery of her seat. Anthea looked up from her phone, puzzled. "Mycroft? Your employer."

"Well, technically speaking, I'm employed by Grimsthorpe Estate, family seat of the Homles'. It just so happened that Mycroft has most use for my talents."

"Just not today?" Molly asked, growing nervous.

Anthea's smiled generously as she offered a wink and began to back away, "Not today."

It took Molly a full five minutes to talk herself out of hurling Wedgewood around the room and given how attentively she was attended by staff, she suspected they could see how close to violence she was. Molly hated, _hated_, feeling as though she were about to become the punch line of some grand joke. When, exactly, would the Holmes family just leave her alone?!

"Don't look so upset, Doctor Hooper, I spent the first three years of my marriage to the late Mr Holmes feeling all adrift. It'll pass."

Molly was assailed by the rich notes of Jo Malone's Pomegranate Noir scent moments before her eyes and feeble mind caught up. Jacqueline Moriarty sat smartly across the table from her, a picture in tailored black slacks and a red silk blouse. A simple, tasteful and gob-smackingly expensive row of diamonds glittered at her throat.

It was just as well that Moriarty had the good sense to snatch Molly's wrist before she could hurl a teacup at the her. It wasn't the sort of place where one should make a scene.

"Isn't this nice?" she smiled warmly as she prised Molly's fingers from the fine china and set the teacup down, "Just us girls."

"Mrs Holmes." Molly stated rather sulkily.

How had she not noticed those damned cheekbones the first time around? Not to mention the thick dark hair pulled so severely back from her sharp features.

"Don't look so upset, even Sherlock hasn't figured it out yet. He'll take exception to me interfering with you. He should be along shortly. A terrible reason for a son to contact his mother, but I'll take what I can get these days."

"I hate your family," Molly muttered as she slouched back into her seat.

Jacqueline seemed genuinely delighted by the childish statement. "Yes, well, then you should fit right in."

It appeared that the staff of Claridge's were quite adept at tactfully diffusing social disasters, a young waitress swept in to take their tea orders. As it turns out, 'black' is not how one should order tea. Mrs Holmes covered for Molly neatly by snapping her menu shut and announcing that they would both have the Darjeeling.

"You know," Molly snagged a freshly delivered cucumber sandwich, "You being who you are goes a long way to explaining why Sherlock is who he is."

"If only it were that simple," Jacqueline looked Molly over slowly, then nodded once as though pleased by what she saw. "Sherlock's evolution is what made me who I am today, I'm afraid."

Molly finished her food and leaned forward, her silence prompting the older woman to continue.

"Imagine having a son who won't talk, then will, but not to you. A husband who encourages coldness. A house more silent than a tomb... Then the husband dies and it may as well be a tomb. I'm not asking for pity, Molly. I have done unforgivable things, but things that I hope will, in time, be understandable. When Sherlock was young he was so affectionate. Keen to love and learn everything the world had. By then Mycroft had grown to be his father's son. I allowed it, I had little choice. But Sherlock was _mine_."

Molly could see it too. A tiny whirl of activity and endless curiosity. Rosy cheeks and inky curls. All that she could see, but a child who would crawl into his mother's arms? No, she couldn't see that.

"Oh, I know, you wouldn't guess it now, I suppose I'm to blame for that. You've no idea what my marriage was like. Stifling, cold. I had been bred and their father had no use for me. He had his heir and his spare and both were of an age to be sent to school. We agreed that I could return to the city to teach, but only if I resigned myself to sending Sherlock to boarding school. I hardly knew any better. I thought that maybe they could handle him, his mind outgrew mine more and more every day. He knew so much and I had so little to offer him. Before I knew it a decade had passed, their father was gone and the cold young man that returned to me regarded me as little more than a stranger. You can't imagine how it hurts to watch something you love eschew your touch."

_Oh, I wouldn't be so sure of that._ "This paints a very pretty picture, but tells me nothing of how we came to be here today."

"Richard was 18 when I met him. He approached me after a lecture on Digital Ethics, of all things, the Internet was a growing beast at that stage, cell phones were hardly common. It was such an exciting and burgeoning field. Call it a mother's wilful ignorance, but here was a boy who still needed guidance. A brilliant boy so like my Sherlock, but with one difference: he still needed _me_."

In that moment Jacqueline looked almost fragile, aged hands playing over the diamonds at her neck, her expression flickering nervously to Molly as though awaiting her judgement.

Molly remained silent.

"Years I worked with him, I suppose I was blind the whole time. I never realised-"

"What a murderous shit he was?"

Jacqueline looked away, "I forget that you knew him. Intimately."

It was so difficult not to snort. "I never knew him. I just saw one of his many masks. It's Sherlock that saw him for who he was. It's Sherlock that's suffering, even now, at the hands of a dead madman."

"I can help him!" She leaned in and grasped Molly's hand. "I just need time. There's still so much at risk. It's still so dangerous. We still have to find-"

"Sebastian Moran." Sherlock's voice shot right into Molly's stomach. She had to stop herself from sighing.

Oh good, another name that she simply did not know.

"That's right, isn't it, Mother?" Sherlock casually passed off his coat and gloves to John, who in turn juggled them briefly before adding his own coat and handing them over to a waiting attendant. "Moran was another of your protégés. Not as smart as Brook, not really. But he was wily, had the sort of practical smarts that take a man far in the world. He might have been fine too, if Richard Brook hadn't found out about him. Gotten his claws into him."

Only in Sherlock's world would this conversation be carried out in such a casual tone. Molly tried to imagine having a similar exchange with her father, but came up blank. For one, the man couldn't get the plot from an episode of _The Bill_ straight, so the high level machinations of the Holmes family would most likely be beyond him. For another matter, Molly couldn't see herself participating in such a conversation without doing some serious wailing and maybe just the smallest amount of flailing.

"Could you bring some chairs?" This from John who spoke quietly to a passing waiter.

"Actually, no need." Molly jumped up from her seat and grandly indicated that Sherlock should take it. "It's about time I leave and _oh!_."

Sherlock slipped into the chair, neatly snagging Molly about the waist as he did so. Molly struggled against his arm for a few moments before she realised that Sherlock had no intention of letting her up.

"This is unseemly, Sherlock!"

But nobody seemed to mind Sherlock's indecorous behaviour. He simply settled her more comfortably onto his lap and smiled as tea was delivered. "Forgive us," he slipped into a good-natured persona as he winked at their waitress and spanned his hand out across her abdomen, "We're sharing some good news!"

_You irredeemable shit._

Molly eyed the steeping pot of tea, pondering the likelihood of incurring any burns herself should she happen to drop it on his arm. John didn't miss her wistful glance and offered her an apologetic smile as he slipped the tea out of her reach.

_John Watson, you traitor._

Not that it was uncomfortable being in Sherlock's lap... and wasn't that just the problem? Sherlock's sheer physical presence was, now and always, so large and warm, so very comforting that no matter what Molly's mind screamed, no matter what transgression he had (or would) commit, there were few places she'd rather be than in the spaces of his body that seemed so perfectly carved to accommodate her. She could bemoan his coldness all she wanted, but how many men could melt her with nothing more than a kiss on the cheek, a proffered packet of crisps, a talented tongue or just a warm lap to curl up on? It was so utterly unfair that she wanted to scream. Even a good man like John had left her cold (and, okay, a little sticky) during their one abortive attempt at intimacy. Not to mention how disastrously it had ended. Even dead, Sherlock was capable of destroying her sex life. How desperately she wished he'd feel even a fraction of what she felt for him. Even if it wasn't love, it was compelling enough to turn her into the most heinous sort of masochist. Always willing and ready to face his inevitable and humiliating rejection.

She knew, more clearly than she knew anything else, how very _wrong_, how utterly vile it was that she wanted to hurt him (_Oh, look, a sadist too!_) but it was all she had. Twice now she'd turned him away from her bed. Twice now she'd seen the sweet glaze of confusion in his eyes. Twice now she'd felt power for the first time ever. It was sort of like kicking a puppy and it made her ill to know that even now she craved that small measure of sway over Sherlock.

It was a counterfeit sort of power, she knew that too. Gained only by cornering him in the only field where he lacked knowledge. How neatly she played him, the confused virgin. Eager to please. Terrified of pleasure.

She wasn't sure that Sherlock even realised that his fingers were playing gently beneath the hem of her shirt, tracking across the waistband of her jeans. Molly shifted unhappily and looked to Jacqueline, whatever else she had missed in her time she hadn't missed her son's attachment to Molly. Again that little nod, as though something about the whole scenario pleased her.

"So Moran...?" Molly tried to bring the conversation back on task.

"Until recently we didn't regard him to be a real threat," Jacqueline explained, "He was Brook's dogsbody. Only now it seems that either Richard left a detailed plan in the event of his death, or Moran is starting to make plans of his own."

Molly's cheeks burned at the thought... "He's the one who tried to torch my flat, isn't he?"

Was it her imagination, or did Sherlock's arm tighten around her?

"Yes, but I do have to own some responsibility for that. We'd been watching you for some time, waiting for Sherlock to show. We hadn't anticipated that Sebastian would... He was spotted outside your flat. That was when I enlisted Mycroft. He had the assets to afford you the appropriate level of surveillance, but we were stretched so thin, between watching you and 221b. It only made sense to leave men on the job as long as you were actually home."

Realisation dawned. "I wasn't supposed to be home."

"Your leave form had been processed by hand, we had no way of knowing you weren't at work. Your detail always left just before you went to Barts, it was identified as a safe place for you to be." Jacqueline nursed her tea as she continued, "John, however, was being followed around the clock. His detail followed him to your home the night before the attack, that's how we knew something was amiss with your schedule." Beneath her, Molly felt Sherlock's loose limbs snap to attention. What she wouldn't give for him to be an idiot, to be the sort of man who could so easily dismiss a throw-away statement, so innocently given. Jacqueline continued heedless of the shift in mood. "It simply took us too long to muster the appropriate personnel to cover your house. When your flat was attacked the next day your security was barely half an hour away."

Molly scarcely knew where to look. Turning to look at Sherlock would damn her more than anything else could. Looking toward John would be tantamount to a confession... and there was no longer a need for confession. Sherlock now knew exactly who had coaxed her out of her knickers on the eve of his resurrection.

Any normal man might have been moved to violence. It would have been nice to see that Sherlock was capable of jealousy. Capable of a normal response, no matter how hurtful. Instead Molly felt only the low, intimate rumble of his voice as he spoke just beneath her ear, his lips glancing across the delicate skin of her neck as he ducked his head low. "I always miss something, don't I?"

From there, things went downhill quickly. His arm had tightened about her waist briefly as he stood, then deposited her back into the seat. "John?" His voice was stiff, painfully cordial. "Outside. Now, please." Jacqueline watched the two men leave with keen interest. When they we finally alone she turned back to Molly, who was busying herself with a small opera cake.

_If you cry now,_ Molly warned herself, _I shall never forgive you._

"Have I done something wrong?" Jacqueline asked.

"No. I have."

**A/N: Comments, as always, are massively encouraging and very welcome.**


	11. Our Evasions Were Lovely

The main foyer of Claridge's hardly seemed like the sort of place one should tarry to start up a row about how impolite it was for one's best friend to 'get off' with your woman and, with that in mind, Sherlock didn't stop until he was a block away from the hotel and breathing hard. Something base and raw picked at his chest, like some horrific skeletal hand playing a discordant tune on his ribcage. At the most basic level he wanted blood, John's, Molly's... God help him, he even wanted to shed his own. As if the physical marker of injury would make them _see_ that he was not unscathed, unfeeling.

... and still he was burdened by reason. That clear hateful voice cutting through all manner of chemical imbalance and demanding that he just stop and _think_, that voice that knew how best to shield him from emotion and hurt and all those things rolling in him like a rather nasty case of indigestion.

Molly. With _John_.

John would have been a better lover, certainly. Hell, Sherlock hadn't technically even earned the title of 'lover' yet and John... funny, charming, heroic Doctor Watson was practically made to order for the lustful yearnings of the thinking woman.

It had been a great source of amusement for Sherlock to watch John cycle through women, except that now... now it didn't seem all that amusing.

Sherlock spun on his heel, watching as John caught up to him. He remained unaware as he rubbed his hand over his chest, trying to massage out some phantom ache.

"You could punch me," John began cautiously, "Might want to find a quieter spot."

The idea wasn't without merit, instead he just asked, "Why?" Had that strangled noise come from him?

"There was nothing malicious in it. You were dead, we were lonely. Do you understand being lonely?"

John knew damn well that he did. It was, after all, what had compelled Sherlock to take him on as a housemate in the first place.

"Did it have to be her? All the time you'd known her and you didn't have much time for her. What changed? Why her? No. Actually, don't tell me."

"You forget that I was, and still am, facing a lengthy detention. It was comfort, Sherlock, at its most basic level..."

Sherlock planted his feet wide, locked his shoulders and waited for what was going to come next. It was, perhaps, the easiest deduction he'd ever made: John would want Molly now. He'd given her time and space to rid herself of her infatuation with Sherlock, to learn that she'd never find satisfaction with him and, now that he'd so tidily proved that very point, didn't it just make perfect sense that he bow out and leave them to whatever followed?

At the time, he'd felt his return to their lives would be a sort of boon. That he'd sweep in and shoulder their burdens, find what haunted them... and the whole time their ghosts had been his creation.

The only thing that had ever truly threatened Molly and John was his presence in their lives (and now his sodding mother). If he hadn't returned that morning would things have progressed? Oh it might have been a drunken tumble, but how long would it have been before they saw the sense in it? Both respected medical professionals, both a little offbeat, both generous and kind and...

Finally the urge to hit John outweighed his higher reason. He didn't pull the punch, didn't spare a thought for John's smaller frame. As it was, it was only John's lower centre of gravity that kept him upright.

"Are you out of your fucking _mind_?!" John hissed as he cradled his jaw and scoped out onlookers. "Dead men don't start skirmishes in the middle of Mayfair, Sherlock!"

Yes. Clearly.

The fact that John's primary concern was his anonymity and, by extension, his safety, made Sherlock want to hit him again. Harder, if possible.

His life had turned into an episode of _EastEnders_ and Sherlock felt the return of that revolting indigestion as he watched John hail a taxi. It wasn't until they were ensconced in the back of a black cab, John quietly rubbing at his rapidly darkening jaw, that Sherlock felt his shoulders collapse and his fists unclench. "What do I do now, John? She won't have me and I'm starting to see the sense in that."

John turned and looked at him, blinking several times as if presented with something difficult to digest. "How is it," he asked, "that you are simultaneously the most brilliant and most idiotic man I have ever known? I never shagged Molly. Not really. But I do know that we were skin to skin and somehow you were right there between us."

* * *

Molly did what any sensible woman would do in such a situation. She sat down and she had tea. And cakes. Really, the spread at Claridge's was not one to be sniffed at and it seemed downright rude to let so many delightful baked goods go to waste. It didn't matter that she'd been left to her own devices, with Mother Holmes, Sherlock and John all departing for places unknown. A woman could only handle so many melodramatic revelations in one day with a low blood sugar level (and, okay, so she never really went that long without snacking on some sugar-laden treat, but it was better to be safe than sorry).

Anthea had sauntered past, snagging a violet macaroon as she passed and explaining that the cheque had been taken care of.

Three hours, one shower and four cups of tea later, Molly alighted a cab outside of Barts. Usually she'd just have taken the Tube, but the station near her flat was always a bit dicey after eight p.m. and she'd wanted privacy while she made the phone call smoothing the way for her return to work that evening. She knew sleep would elude her, returning to work seemed to be the only sensible course of action and, as good sense had been thin on the ground of late, Molly was in dire need of a few sensible decisions.

Six hours later Molly sat behind her microscope and toed off her ballet flats. It wasn't that she didn't love her flat, because she did, it was just that she hadn't been able to stomach the thought of sitting on the sofa where she'd so very nearly shagged John, or lying in the bed where she'd so very nearly shagged Sherlock, or standing in the shower where she _had_ shagged Richard Brook (she blamed a rather inspiring article from _Marie Claire_ for that one). What a little tart she'd become. Still, she always imagined that fallen women typically felt a lot more satisfied than she was at present.

"You know, I have it on good authority that they'd have let you return to work on a more civilised schedule." It looked like Lestrade was also keeping 'uncivilised' hours.

Molly didn't look up from her slide, "Never been the nine to five sort. You know that, Greg. What sort of mayhem drags you from your bed tonight?"

Greg didn't speak, prompting Molly to look up to where he was propped against the desk, arms crossed and face pained in the way that only a seasoned father could manage. "Kathy kicked you out again?"

"Voluntary this time, I'm afraid."

"Sorry to hear it, you deserve better." And he did. Molly sat upright and smiled sadly at him.

"I do. Have a drink with me this weekend."

"I said 'better', Greg, didn't you hear?" Molly busied herself with her cup of coffee. It was cold and bitter, but she'd committed to taking a mouthful so she simply swallowed it.

"I'd be good to you. Good _for_ you."

What made the softly spoken conversation so wonderfully awful was that he was right.

"I keep getting blown up, kidnapped. I'd send you grey."

He fixed her with a dry stare. She reached for her coffee again.

"Stop, Molly. I'm only vaguely serious. Offer always stands, though. Put the coffee down, I've been standing at the door for fifteen minutes, we both know it's cold. What's got you so wrapped up?"

"John Doe's stomach contents. Blood. Not his own."

"Unusual."

Molly shrugged a single shoulder, "Unusual-ish. I've seen it before, but it really does start to fall into your hands when we try to work out how it got there. I'll call Sergeant Donovan after sunrise."

"Sunrise was twenty minutes ago."

"Oh."

"Have you time for a coffee? I'm actually here in an official capacity."

"You were officially asking me for a drink?" Molly slipped her shoes back on and shrugged out of her lab coat. She fiddled with her cardigan pockets to check that she had enough change for a coffee from the vending machine.

"That was the ice breaker. I'm going to need you at the station at nine. We need a 'consulting pathologist'."

Molly knew it was socially unacceptable to smile, but she couldn't help herself. She loved a challenge, and Lestrade always brought her the best sorts of cases. "Anything good?"

"Mmm," Greg held the door open as Molly slipped into the corridor, "Some bloke faked his death a few months ago, he's finally made contact. On the eve of his accomplice's trial, no less. Need a professional opinion on how he might have accomplished that."

It was nearly impossible to suppress her groan.

"Sherlock sends his regards, by the way."

* * *

_Dinner? M_

For the briefest moment, John entertained the idea that she had accidentally sent the message to him and that it had, in fact, been intended for Sherlock. Didn't stop him from letting himself into her flat two hours later, a bottle of Cab Sav tucked securely under his arm.

Molly was curled up on her couch surfing news channels, Sherlock's face briefly dominated the screen. Molly hit the mute button with a snort of disgust and hurled the remote away. "Looks like he's been busy."

"I really can't complain. It looks like I'm getting let off with a reprimand." John scooped up the remote, set the bottle aside and started flicking through the channels. "_Geordie Shore_?"

"You must be joking."

"Sherlock's on an _Antiques Roadshow_ bender. I need this."

It was true, if John had to witness Sherlock screaming 'Fake!' at another piece of Wedgewood or Febergé bracelet, he'd be reaching for the real estate section of the paper. He turned on the volume and reached for Molly's legs, lifting them briefly while he dropped down then returning them to his lap.

"Where is he?"

"Family dinner. Even I'm not brave enough to intrude there."

"Not with his family. I read that some new evidence has linked Brook to some remains they've found. Has Jacqueline Holmes written all over it."

They fell quiet for a few moments as rough Geordie accents filled the room. It was almost soothing, after the the media circus of the last few days, to sit with Molly and pretend to be normal. Just a normal couple watching telly, the biggest decision that they'd need to face involved that age old dilemma: 'kebabs or korma' for dinner. And it would be kebabs. Molly hated Indian food.

The pretence might have worked, had Molly's cold feet not started to shake intermittently with the gentle force of her silent sobbing.

"Molly..." John gripped her feet between his palms, "It's not that bad... things are looking up."

For him, at least, things were looking up. John understood that Molly was facing a fair amount of scrutiny for her part in Sherlock's 'death', but Barts seemed to have no intention of suspending their best pathologist, not when cases were already so backed up in the wake of her convalescent leave. He had gathered that things with Sherlock weren't great, actually, things with Sherlock weren't much of anything at all.

They hadn't seen each other since the debacle at Claridge's. In the hours that Sherlock was at 221b John would watch him pace and, approximately twice every hour, don his coat and then... whip it off with a noise of disgust. Twice now he'd actually gotten as far as wrapping his scarf around his neck.

"Just go and see her," John had urged after the third aborted attempt.

"She tends to take exception to me walking out on her, John. I suspect she won't be too forgiving after the way I left."

"You were hurt."

Again, that look of disgust. God forbid that John imply Sherlock Holmes has _feelings_.

"Look," John tried another tack, "Forgiving you is a hard habit to break, she might have some small measure of compassion left."

Of course, as John tugged Molly upright and into his arms, he realised that Sherlock wasn't the person that Molly needed to forgive. She tucked her face into his shoulder and sniffed, "I've buggered up," she croaked.

"I think we both did."

"No, I don't mean _that_. I've gone and fallen in love with him. I'm the worst sort of idiot. It's all good and well to fancy the pants off the bloke, but love? He doesn't even know the meaning of the word!"

Right. John knew he could be a pretty shite friend, but in this instance he knew that there was absolutely only one course that a true friend could take. He stood, shoving Molly from his lap as he went.

"Sometimes I think you might underestimate him more than he does himself. He might not be your answer to Darcy or sodding Rochester, but he is exactly what you've panted after for all this time. Then you get him and you don't want him? Except that you _do_ want him, only you want all of him. Not just the bits he's happy to afford you. You know what that makes you, Molly?"

She didn't seem to be taking his speech too well, she simply tucked her feet up and huddled deeply in her oversized cardi (this one embroidered with flamingoes). John exploited the silence that followed to answer his own question.

"Normal. It makes you normal. Because you're just some bird who isn't happy that her bloke won't hand her his soul on a silver bloody platter and that, is about as normal as it gets. You've spent so long hiding behind an unrequited crush, Molly, that you've forgotten how much normal relationships suck."

With that, John grabbed his wine and made a rather abrupt exit to Molly's staircase. It wasn't until he was out on the street that he slowed. It was a good thing that he did or he might have missed the sight of Sherlock, wind blown and cloaked against the elements, his hands stuffed into his pockets and his collar flipped high. He stood looking up at the soft light seeping from behind Molly's drawn curtains. He'd said that Sherlock was no Darcy or Rochester, but standing on the street all wind-swept and mournfully excluded he would make a passable Heathcliff. Git.

"Did you follow me?" He called into the wind. Sherlock seemed neither guilty to be found nor surprised to see John.

"Your phone went off at five twenty. Molly would have been on the Tube then, contemplating dinner. Considering possible options for company. But of course it's not just that. You showered, dressed. Mustard sweater, the nauseating one. You only wear it on laundry days or when meeting someone with similarly appalling taste in knitwear. Aftershave, implies female company, but not the expensive one Harry bought you for Christmas, so there's a chance you don't want into her knickers. But masculine pride demands you still smell somewhat alluring... Is this getting boring yet, because I can go on?"

"Please don't." It would have been easier if he'd just said that he'd followed him in a cab and the was nothing wrong with his sweater. It wasn't exactly a date pullover, but he looked perfectly fine. "Going up, then?"

Sherlock hesitated. John thrust his bottle of wine at him.

He might have warned Sherlock that Molly was in a bit of a state, but the sweater comment had really stung.

* * *

What bothered Molly the most about their entire exchange (could it be an exchange if the conversation was entirely one sided?) was that he'd nicked off with the bottle of wine.

In Molly's experience, sulking was far easier when one had large amounts of alcohol at their disposal. She supposed she had a few bottles of Muscato tucked away, and that bottle of Moët Rosé Imperial that Sally had given her a few months back (a gift for her help regarding a particularly grisly case), yet something about the situation called for a dry, rich red. Which she no longer had.

Leaving the bottle would have been the least that John could do after delivering such a stinging (and, yes, truthful) blow. Molly stood and shuffled barefoot into her kitchen to grab some paper towel. She was blowing her nose rather noisily when she turned back to catch sight of Sherlock removing his coat and hanging it up.

"Sherlock..." Her voice was small, squeaky. Also, well, obvious. Why could she never be brilliant when he was around? She went from dowdy homebody with snot on her chin to wild righteous indignation in the blink of an eye. How nice it would be to, just once, present him with a well-adjusted woman capable of enticing a man into bed (and, oh, for fun, maybe keeping him there?).

"Congratulations on your official resurrection. You're all over the papers." Oh, bravo, Molly. It was a sound start at the very least.

"Mmm," He handed her the wine. _Good man_. "In a rather bizarre turn of events Kitty Riley has become my champion. She seems Hell-bent on making amends. She writes such glowing reports that I fear I might blush."

"She's still a toad." Molly sniffed.

"Undoubtedly. But she's a toad with a voice and right now I need one of those. Have you been crying?" His tone barely shifted, she might have missed the switch in conversation completely had he not accusingly narrowed his eyes on her face.

It wasn't as though she could deny it. She'd hardly ever been a pretty crier. Perhaps she wasn't a loud crier, but she was an earnest one. She knew from experience that her eyes would be red rimmed, puffy and her foundation washed away in the deluge. "A little."

Sherlock shifted on his feet, clearly uncomfortable... almost certainly planning an escape. Even Molly had to give him a hefty dose of credit when he stayed rooted to the spot, clutching his hands together in a gesture that was like nothing she'd ever seen from him before. He even _mumbled_ as he asked, "Did John make you cry? God, did _I_?"

"Fear not, Sherlock. I've been amply capable of bringing myself to tears for decades now. Your conscience is clear."

Again that shifting and wringing of hands! Molly reached out quickly and stilled his hands with hers. The vibrant slash of her burn stood out in sharp relief to the pale skin. "Absent, transient, faithless. My conscience is many things, Molly, but it is not _clear_." His thumb ghosted over the painfully raw wound, the tight persistent ache leaving her unable to tell if he'd ever quite touched her.

"One bottle," Molly confessed sadly, "One bottle less and I probably would have shagged John, you know. So don't feel too bad."

"And now?" His eyes never lifted from her hand.

"I'm not sure there are enough bottles in the world."

And that, Molly knew, was the hideous truth. Now Sherlock knew it too and all at once Molly was reduced to the sweet mousy woman she'd been, shuffling around Sherlock as though he were the sun and she some helpless celestial body drawn to his gravitational pull. Sweet Molly Hooper with that lopsided ponytail, viscera splattered on her shoe and an utterly open and nauseatingly hopeful smile on her face. But that Molly Hooper hadn't loved Sherlock, not really, not in the way that this new, hard Molly Hooper did. Not with that violent, unspeaking, bitter desperation that was so overpowering, so uncompromising that she'd rather be without him entirely than accept some physical or emotional concession on his part.

How perfectly awful it was, after so long imagining herself in love with Sherlock, to _actually_ go ahead and fall in love with him. Molly hated love. Hated love, and hated Sherlock, who put no stock in love but, with his every uncertain intimacy and awkward advance, demanded it. A useless bloody emotion that he didn't want, didn't understand... and the idiot commanded it in bulk.

Molly snatched her hand back and turned to find wine glasses. She didn't ask if he wanted any, she simply poured two glasses. If need be she'd drink them both... and then when he left - and he would - she'd drink the whole bloody bottle. It was surprising to watch him reach for the glass, as though he didn't know what to do with his hands. It shouldn't have been, after his years of hard drugs, alcohol was probably minor league for him.

"For my sanity's sake, may I continue to delude myself that you didn't come even that close to being with John?"

Molly gulped her wine. _Elegance and class, right there._ Sherlock sipped at his. "Your sanity? Forgive me if I don't peg you for the possessive type."

That, apparently, had been the wrong thing to say. Sherlock slammed down his wine glass, heedless as the contents slopped over his knuckles, he made a snatch for hers, relieving her of her much-needed drink and grasping her wrist to pull her around the bench until she stood just inches in front of him. Tall as he was, he seemed to grow in height and fairly vibrate with irritation as he jabbed a finger at her sofa. "I'm learning all sorts of things about myself, these days, Molly. Six sources of ignition in the kitchen and lounge room alone with which I can ignite that sofa, Molly, and you've no idea how desperately I want to." His hand came up to grip the back of her neck as he dipped his head and spoke swiftly into her ear. Lips - _God_ - teeth, scraped across the shell of her ear as he continued speaking. His voice was low, dangerous, rich, richer than the wine she was nervously licking from her lips. His words were low and fast, running together but perfectly clear to her, "Then I think to myself: no, just bend her over the sofa and have her there yourself. We both know how improbable that scenario is, since I'm scarcely capable of fucking you, much less fucking away your memory of another man. That's the thing, instinct and damn desire still insist that I can, nay _must_. Imagine my confusion, Molly. Because my mind knows that John is no threat, that my misery is my own making... My mind lays bare fact upon fact. Beautiful, sensible reason as far as the eye can see and all that I..." His hands dropped to her waist, clenching roughly in the fabric of her cardigan, "...all that I can really hold onto is the fact that You. Smell. Of. Another. Man."

Sherlock roughly hauled her cardigan up and over her head, not bothering with the buttons. Truly, the man needed to make peace with her sartorial leanings. A button snagged briefly, painfully, in her nostril and she was struck by the truth of what he was saying. She _did_ smell of John's aftershave. An inoffensive and not particularly arousing mix of bergamot and lemon, a hint of violet. Her cardigan went sailing across the kitchen, leaving her in only a navy blue lace bra and a low slung pair of oversized track pants. Sherlock crowded her, his own scent screaming of opulence and demanding her attention. How often she'd admired his coolness, but now, trapped against him with his body throwing heat and the earthy scent of citrus, anchored with notes of pepper and flint, he didn't seem at all cool. He actually seemed downright terrifying.

Large hands closed around her shoulders, holding her in place (as if she wanted to be anywhere else?) and he spoke again. He seemed calmer, having rid her of the cardigan, playful in the way a cat played with mice. Which was to say, not playful at all...

"And all at once I both delight and commiserate that fate has dealt you this terrible blow and that you are for me, and _not_ for a good man like John Watson. How dearly I'd like to redress such a woeful wrong, Molly. Will you let me try?"

It was, of course, a spectacularly stupid thing to be doing. Molly knew that at any moment he, or she (or both if they were crafty enough) would do something to cock up the whole situation. Things would be said, feelings hurt (hers) and one of them would walk away unsatisfied. It was something of a pattern that they'd fallen into and...

Good grief, the man had slipped his hand into her knickers. He didn't find her wet, but after a handful of minutes he certainly left her that way. It wasn't a spectacularly proud moment for Molly, she'd just stood there sort of whimpering, her knees moving further and further apart, her knickers and pants slipping lower and lower (sort of like her moralistic stance on erotic play with men who were destined to break her heart). He'd had a shamefully easy time bringing her to orgasm. By the time he withdrew his fingers, slipping them over her clit as he departed, Molly was the very picture of wanton abandon. The cups of her bra had been pressed low (who had been responsible for that!?) her breasts heavy and exposed to his dark gaze, her track pants and knickers sagged about her knees and only Sherlock's hand against the small of her back kept her upright.

It was hard to believe that the man was so untried in pleasures of the flesh when she watched him suck his glistening fingers into his mouth and groan low in his throat as though the taste of her was something he had craved for an age.

With a resigned little sigh Molly pressed her knees together and allowed her pants (and quite possibly her self esteem) to continue their descent. She stepped free of them and deftly reached back to unclip her bra. In for a penny and all that...

Standing fully naked in front of Sherlock, Molly supposed it was time to play coy, to feel shy. But she didn't, she wasn't certain that any woman faced with such a heated look could feel anything short of utterly empowered. He was a rather fantastic male specimen, she decided as she snagged his hand and backed toward her bedroom, never bothering to shift her eyes from him. His shirt strained at his shoulders, his charcoal slacks a perfect fit for his slim hips and powerful thighs... And, yes, that thick, beautiful cock pressing against the fabric. For her.

Molly wasn't one to wax poetical about a man's attributes. She'd seen many a man naked (most for work, some online, a few in her bed) and felt reasonably equipped to declare Sherlock's heavy, hard shaft a work of art. Really, a lesser woman would weep with joy.

"Just so we're clear," Molly tried for a conversational tone as she unbuttoned his shirt, "I mean to take this to its inevitable conclusion."

His face was tight as he looked down and nodded briefly, "Inevitable, yes. I just can't promise that it will be timely."

She shrugged, she genuinely did not care if they failed. It only mattered that he at least _tried_. Besides, how hard could it be?

Sherlock pushed his trousers and pants down his legs. _Quite hard_.

She reached for him eagerly, her palm wrapping around his hot length. She'd barely moved her hand when he tightly gripped her wrist and shook his head. "A minute, please." So polite, so desperate. She waited patiently while he sat, finally naked, on the edge of her bed, fingers digging into his thighs while he sucked in a few shaky breaths.

She allowed him a full minute to gather himself. "Lie back," she directed him softly. Her hands spanning his shoulders and pressing gently. He went willingly and Molly felt a heady rush at the thought of having Sherlock Holmes in her bed. Willing. Able. _Mine_. Even if it would only be a brief episode in her life, she'd take it. She wasn't stupid. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, almost wistfully, and she regarded it as though it were the source of all comfort and joy in the world.

Maybe, in that moment, it was. But Sherlock had stipulated hat he did not kiss, and Molly - stubborn as she had become - would take only what was freely given or she would take nothing at all. And this, Molly decided, would be the most painful and thrilling sort of nothing that she'd ever had. It wouldn't be love and it wouldn't be enough, but it was a truce of sorts and, maybe, if she could survive this absence of sentiment on his part, if she could echo it with her own sweet temper (surely she'd left it lying around here somewhere?), then morning would come and they'd both be able to forget that she loved him to the exclusion of all others, that she loved him to the exclusion of her own sense of self-preservation.

Molly started slowly. Straddling him, her knees framing his hips and her fingers spread out over the planes of his chest. He was almost hairless, with only a dark trail starting low on his stomach and leading down to her goal. She rocked against him, slow and undemanding, her wet flesh running up and down against the textured underside of his cock. Oh God, she liked that, _loved_ it. She raked her nails over his flat nipples as she continued to move. When his hips began to shift in small, involuntary bucking movements she smiled down at him and speared the fingers of one hand into his hair. She tugged softly as she leaned down and spoke into his ear. "Help me, Sherlock?"

Her hips stilled as she came up on her knees, her hand and his bumping as they positioned the thick head of his cock against her aching wet pussy. His hands gripped her hips and panic flushed his face, but Molly would have none of it. She dropped her forehead to his and whispered, "Breathe, and for the love of God, Sherlock: stop thinking."

Then it was a simple (and damning) matter of sinking into each other, physically, figuratively. Their bodies found a stilted, awkward and wonderful kind of rhythm. He surprised her, his breath hot against her cheek and his body striving for a much lengthier fuck than Molly would have guessed him capable of. It wasn't until she reached between her own legs and pressed her fingers shakily to her clit, that he came inside of her with a wet rush and a wordless cry. His back bowed and the cords of his neck lengthened and tightened. He seemed so beautiful in that moment, his eyes screwed shut and his expressive face scrunched up in pleasure (odd, that that place between his eyes, not even an inch of skin and muscle, could beguile her so), that Molly could only follow suit. Unlike Sherlock, Molly took great pains to to bite back her own cries.

It didn't seem right for her to shout his name, when he had not shouted hers.

* * *

Sherlock watched Molly and waited a full forty minutes for her to fall asleep (not the counterfeit sleep she'd tried to fool him with initially). Only when he was confident that she slept wholly and soundly, did he lean in to pass his lips gently across hers.

**A/N**: I spent far too long contemplating what the boys would smell like. If anyone is curious, I went with Terre d'Hermes for Sherlock and Dior's Fahrenheit for John.

I also wrote a bit of Teh Sex. Which is always a bit dicey with me, I get all flustered and nervous. I apologise for any cringing I may have inspired. Mistakes (and I'm sure they are numerous as it is two a.m.) are entirely my own.

And, as always, thanks so much for your wonderful comments. Please feel free to leave more. I love them.


	12. A Thousand Casual Deaths

Molly shut her eyes tightly against the sunlight that filtered into her bedroom. She'd forgotten to close the blinds last night (she'd been distracted) and the sun fell across her sheets and duvet, warming her. Maybe, if she stayed still enough, refused to open her eyes, she wouldn't have to face what she'd done. She wouldn't have to face the cold expanse of bed either side of her that was both familiar and disappointing.

Of course she was alone and, really, maybe that was the kinder option. It was far too early in the day to face all of the things that she'd need to. Naked and sticky between the thighs was _not_ how she needed to be when she finally faced-

A foot brushed against her own and her eyes flew open. _Jesus Christ he's still in my bed!_

She could be forgiven for thinking he'd abandoned her at some stage in the night, he was as far removed from her as the bed would allow, curled up into himself (no mean feat given his size) watching her with unblinking intensity. Sherlock shuffled a little more securely onto the bed. Their knees bumped beneath the sheets and suddenly the bed didn't feel so cold.

It would have been nice to say that he looked bedraggled, but he truly didn't. His hair looked as endearingly chaotic as it always did. Even naked he maintained a regal, stiff sort of bearing. There was, however, an uneasy set to his shoulders, as though he were unsure, as though he'd done something wrong.

Unfortunately, for the first time in a long while, he'd done something all too right. Molly almost wanted to pitch a fit. At least if he'd been gone she'd have had another sin to pile up against him.

_Oh, inconsistency, thy name is Molly Hooper._

"Would you like me to leave?" His voice was rough with sleep.

_Yes, go. Now. Get out of my bloody life and take my tarty, worthless heart with you because it's clearly not following direction these days._

She managed a squeak and a pitiful shake of the head. She hooked her foot behind his bent knee and coaxed him closer. There'd be a price for it all: last night, that morning. Molly would pay it later. Heartache was persistent, it would wait.

Sunlight tried and failed to keep the chill out of the air as they lay silently facing each other. Unblinking moments turned into minutes, but the silence and stillness were bizarrely bearable.

"I don't love you." His words were straightforward. Fact. Delivered with all the ease of truth. The sky is blue. The cause of death was asphyxiation. The Tube is busy at 5 p.m. Licorice and red wine do not constitute a well-balanced diet. I don't love you.

It might have been kinder if he had simply struck her. This, more than anything, highlighted what Molly already knew. They would not, could not, make this work.

Sherlock thought his blatant truth was a kindness of sorts. Molly saw it as a preemptive strike, absolving him of all responsibility when she demanded more from him than he was capable of giving.

She might have kicked him from her bed (again), but self-denial was getting old. Se shrugged a bare shoulder and smiled meekly. "I know. It's okay."

…and maybe it would be okay. Eventually.

The previous night Molly had been so adamant that there was nowhere to go with their relationship (she winced at even the thought of the word), that _she_would refuse to allow it to go further.

All very pretty sentiment that had been flushed away the very second she'd managed to secure one sweaty, surging, stunning Sherlock Holmes between her knees. _Bad form, Molly. You've done this to yourself._

Of course, if she'd bothered to pull her head from her arse she'd have realised one very clear thing: their 'relationship' had already run its course. Her heart was broken, had been for quite some time. Everything that followed might not exactly be healthy, but it was hardly going to do any further damage. Like being a 'little bit pregnant', or a 'little bit dead', the heart could not be a little bit broken. It was, or it wasn't. And, lying in bed with Sherlock's exacting gaze interrogating her she knew that hers was just as broken as it could be.

She idly ran her foot down his calf, then up again.

"Do I thank you? Is that standard?" Sherlock came up to rest on one elbow, the movement shifting the bedding so that it rested precariously over Molly's breasts.

Molly gave an indelicate snort. He could play the despoiled virgin all he liked, but she wasn't fooled. No one was more observant, or better versed, in the societal norms of interpersonal relationships than Sherlock Holmes. It was simply that he deemed them to be either boring or extraneous to the conduct of _his_ personal life. Still, she supposed it was nice that he was feigning consideration.

"Tell me about Sebastian Moran." _Yes, Molly, 'homicidal maniacs' is perfectly acceptable pillow talk._

"Mother suspects that he and Brook made contact half a decade ago. Moran is ex SAS, nasty sort. Excellent marksman. Very adept at hiding in plain sight. The perfect weapon for the urban battlefield, he's done a lot of what you might call 'wet work'. A follower and now, without Brook to bring him to heel, a bit of a worry. He's a killer."

"Most mothers cook or do needlework. Yours cultivates sociopathic killers."

"Well, in Moran's case I'd lean more to the psychopathic end of the spectrum."

"Lovely. And he wants you dead?"

"Mmm. And you."

"How do we stop him?"

"_We_ don't. He's gone to ground. He'd need a compelling reason to surface. Mother informs me that she has a plan."

Were it not for the shadowy bruising beneath his eyes she might have forgotten how recently John had broken his nose. It was easy to take giant leaps of fancy where Sherlock was concerned, easy to cast him as a roguish Victorian gentleman, or a dastardly villain bent on securing her to train tracks. Molly eyed the sheet sitting midway on his chest, it seemed worthwhile forgoing her own modesty for a chance to slowly peruse his body. She had a feeling she'd need to gawk her fill while she could. This mutual lunacy wouldn't last long. Maybe one or two more bouts, enough for Sherlock to hone the art of fucking and then file it away. He would be, she knew, an apt pupil. Would he 'delete' the knowledge of their time together when it was done? She would, if she had the capacity. It made her envious, knowing that one day (soon) he'd walk away, fully capable of moving on.

Molly made a mental note to start searching for work out of the country. Did they have need of pathologists in Antarctica?

The sheet fell to her waist as she sat up and pressed her bare back to the pillows. Her movements served a dual purpose, forcing the bedding down to Sherlock's waist.

In her mind she could see him laid out on a pedestal in the Lourve, rendered in marble by one of the master sculptors. A God in repose… for the first time she could understand why men had spent so many centuries beating their chests and behaving in such a proprietary manner about their women. There was something heady in knowing that she'd had him first. No matter how untouchable he was, how unfathomable the endless reaches of his mind… she had _had him first_.

Good Lord, it was a wonder she wasn't growling and scratching her balls. Molly shifted uncomfortably and brought her arms up to cross over her chest. He'd turned her into a Neanderthal.

"Don't." He was quick to snatch her wrist and pull her arms back down. Funny, that for all her hormones and lustful thoughts, she hadn't considered that she had any sway over him. It made sense, she'd compelled him to break a life-long streak of abstinence (_Would it be bad form to call 'high five Molly!'?_).

"I want to see you." He spoke, but didn't move. The statement had an air of amusement about it, as if he too couldn't believe that he was finally answering to his base needs. From any other man it might have been insulting.

"Only see?" She asked.

His eyebrow kicked up.

That was roughly where her sexual suggestiveness ran out, she blushed furiously and reached for the sheets, but never got the chance to haul them up. Sherlock set upon her with a speed and purpose that she hadn't expected. His hips settled firmly between her thighs, his body pressing her back into her pillows. "Teasing, Molly? I would never have credited you with the capacity."

Oh, to be able to do anything other than gawk up at him, wide-eyed and flushed …

His hips rolled and she felt the thick damp crown of his cock glance against the inside of her thigh. "Y-you seem to… uhm… to be learning how t-to tease too."

The ghost of a grin flashed across his face as he dropped his cheek to her breasts and began to alternate between speech and lavishing attention upon her nipples. "One likes," he began, his lips teasing and brushing, "To use all resources available when embarking upon any undertaking."

Molly's fingers wound into his hair, her thighs falling wide as he settled more firmly between them… as if there was no place in the world he would rather be. "Undertaking?"

"Sex. Keep up Molly." God, that _tongue_.

"I'm an undertaking?"

"A pleasant one." Her fingers tightened painfully in his hair. His hands dropped to her hips and gripped her with a comparable force.

"Not that your arsenal isn't formidable, Sherlock." He proved the point by lazily rubbing his shaft along the soft skin between her thighs, "But what resources do you mean?"

He had the good grace to look up at her with an (albeit woeful) imitation of coyness. "Your iPad? Your web browser history had been invaluable in my education."

Wait. He'd watched her… well, porn? Shame and lust warred for playtime in her head.

"I like to please." He'd given up all pretence of conversing with her, and now simply addressed the curve of her breast as he rubbed his stubble roughened jaw against her soft skin.

"No, you don't."

"I like to please _you_, then." His tongue wound itself around her nipple.

"Also patently untrue."

Well, not _entirely_ untrue. Molly was well on her way to being pleased as his spare hand dropped between their bodies. His fingers found her wet and needy, his thumb petted her clit and his mouth latched onto her breast with renewed vigour and singular purpose.

It was time to stop. She knew that.

In the lonely nights to come she'd happily congratulate herself on having the good sense to know when to stop.

And then she'd congratulate herself on having the _spectacular_ sense to know that, sometimes, good sense is just not worth listening to.

* * *

Jacqueline Holmes was having a good day. Actually, a good week. She had secured a lunch date with her eldest son and confirmed (though she had always suspected) that her youngest was still alive. She'd also sorted that thing with the new marble in the foyer (renovations were Hell).

It was true that the Triad weren't exactly forthcoming with information about Moran (who had been sighted in some of their less-reputable gaming establishments), but they'd come around. Where Jacqueline Holmes was concerned, almost everybody did.

Well, her sons were the exception. And the Hooper girl.

Still, if things between Sherlock and the sweet doctor continued in the direction they were going, Jacqueline suspected she'd forgive Molly Hooper almost anything.

Actually, on the theme of forgiveness, she supposed it might be a worthy gesture to seek a little from Molly. Kidnapping the paramour of your son was awfully crass.

Luckily, Jacqueline had – like many women of her social standing – gotten gift giving down to something of a fine art. Molly Hooper did seem like a woman after her own heart, so it wasn't a stretch to imagine the perfect conciliatory gift. After the Molotov Cocktail incident she had been baying for Moran's blood and it wouldn't be a hardship to present the good doctor with the man's head on a platter.

Jacqueline hadn't even begun to reach into the considerable depths of her resources. Other mothers had prided themselves on always having the details of a good caterer, or an excellent physiotherapist on hand. While she certainly did have those, she had always been more concerned with her other contacts.

Being able to knock out a sit-down dinner for twelve was all well and good, but having a Triad assassin in your address book was preferable by far.

* * *

_Morstan._ Sherlock had very nearly deleted the name in the days since his public revival. Still, something about the Morstan case had struck him as… well, not interesting. The case itself was an unfortunate, but transparent, case of greed and opportunity. What _had_ proven interesting was Morstan herself. She'd boldly approached him after a four hour interview at the local station. It had been raining, freezing and she'd weathered it all to put her case to him. Tenacity was something he could appreciate. John too. Her looks were also worth appreciating and therein lay her worth.

She was, Sherlock decided, something of a step up from John's norm (physically and mentally). Presumably patient and kind, given her work with underprivileged teens, she was precisely John's sort. The case gave him cause to throw her in his path and that, Sherlock decided, was exactly what needed to happen.

It wasn't that he suspected John or Molly of any secretly harboured desires for one another, but it seemed prudent to eliminate both the temptation and opportunity.

Which would mitigate one of far too many variables that all amounted to Molly putting an end to what he was starting to realise was a rather beneficial entanglement. Certainly he'd always understood just how powerful emotion and lust could be, especially when regarded as catalysts for crime. But now… well, it all sort of crystallised in his mind. For her breasts alone he felt moved to commit any number of wrongdoings.

Actually, for a single response to one of his text messages (he _had_ sent three) he'd probably do just as much. He knew that it was a bad sign when, after spending the night (and much of the next day) with a woman, she withdrew and began to ignore correspondence.

Doubt was an insidious thing, something he had little time for – especially when said doubt was directed inward – but, as he stepped from the cab and moved toward the side entry of Barts, he did have to wonder if maybe he hadn't handled the whole thing rather poorly. Not the act itself. That much, he felt confident she'd enjoyed. Molly was a terrible liar, he doubted that she'd lied on that count. But maybe he'd missed some cue, some societal edict that demanded… oh, Christ, _something_. Should he have left in the night? That would hardly have been in keeping with his desire to further their physical relationship.

He'd failed to provide any form of contraception. But then, he'd hardly gone there expecting… _that_. He'd suffered some sort of hormonal meltdown (on par with Chernobyl) and things had escalated quickly (successfully) from there. He knew that Molly was on long-term birth control, he'd nicked her Barts access card from her handbag enough times to know that feminine products were not among the detritus that collected in the bottom of her handbag. It wasn't as though she was the squeamish sort in that regard.

Sherlock found Molly in the corridor outside of the morgue, retrieving a bag of crisps from the vending machine.

"When did you last eat?" Brilliant, an opening. She had to eat, that would get him at least an hour in the clear.

Molly jerked upright, clutching her chips to her breast as though they were a shield. Her eyes dropped to the packet. "Er… now? I mean, well, I'm about to, aren't I?"

"Hardly nutritional."

"Sherlock," Molly turned and moved back toward the morgue, "John has reliably informed me that you once went four days on a single tin of tuna, something you found in a Petri dish and fifteen cups of coffee. Forgive me if I don't take nutritional advice from you."

"An hour, I know a place."

"Of course you do."

"So you'll come?"

"I'm working."

"You haven't been home since yesterday."

"I'm working _hard_."

He felt a twitch in his jaw. "Too hard to check your phone?"

They arrived at Molly's desk, the crisps were tossed aside, forgotten. Two cups of coffee sat on the desk, a skin forming on top of them suggesting they'd been there for some time. "Actually, it died last night. No battery."

That accounted for one, maybe two of the unanswered messages.

"I'm making an effort, Molly." The words were low, heated. He hated how soft, how desperate he sounded. Did she want more, did she need more?

She frowned and wheeled on him, her face lit up with confusion. "Trying? I just… you only left mine yesterday morning. I worked last night. I thought. I… we… well. I just thought we were a tad more casual than that. You know: Molly from the morgue. Molly the pathologist. Molly, the girl you shagged once-"

"Four times."

"_Four_ times." She conceded with a jerky nod, while wringing her hands, her pale, perfect face turned up to his nervously. Was she… did she doubt him? His intentions? He was growing exceedingly fond of her. She had secured herself a place on a very short list of the people that Sherlock Holmes could tolerate for any length of time. Really, it was painfully obvious. Embarrassingly so. It was bad enough that he felt like some sort of pet that continued to show up at the foot of her bed and beg to stay.

Oh, he needed to talk to John. John would understand this.

He looked down at Molly. Some wholly inappropriate and purely male part of him noted that she was wearing a skirt. He didn't need John to tell him that enquiring after her underwear (and its possible removal?) was probably not going to win him any points. "Lunch. Just across the road at the sandwich bar."

Her eyes slid to the body, covered but still out on her work table. "Give me a few to put Mr Greaves to bed?"

"Of course. I'll go ahead and order you some lunch."

"Erm. Yes. Okay. Uh, maybe tuna on-"

"Rye. I know."

"Of course you do."

* * *

The thing was, until recently, Molly had always answered her texts. It was only polite. She'd just developed the awful habit of ignoring people since that business with John, and now Sherlock.

Men complicated things.

Molly stopped in at the Ladies on her way out. She was still wearing yesterday's skirt and a twinset dotted with bumble bees. It might have been nice to be fresh-faced and on form for lunch with Sherlock. It was possible she _had_ lost a few hours somewhere.

_Really, how did Tuesday just morph into Wednesday without any notice?!_

Sherlock had unsettled her (nothing new there) but what _was_ new was the reason. This time it was not his indifference that caused her to stutter and fawn like a schoolgirl, but the fact that he'd stood in her morgue, practically in her own footsteps and certainly in her own space and just… _loomed_. Nobody had a physical presence like that man. Nobody _used_ their physical presence like he did. Yet, for all that, he'd seemed truly unaware of how close he stood. How he leaned in. how he affected her. Ugh.

Molly yanked her hair tie out and raked her fingers through her hair. It was lunch. She'd do. She continued to agonise over things as she made her way into the main corridor.

If she was being honest with herself (_Oh, novelty!_) there might have been a reason that she'd pulled an all-nighter. She hadn't been sure how she'd take it if he'd shown up at her door wanting… well, _that_. She'd have given in. Obviously.

Molly Hooper was neither an idiot nor a masochist and Sherlock was proving to be a quick (well, not _quick_) study in the bedroom. And the kitchen.

Sunlight smacked her in the face as she stepped out onto the street. She blinked a few times, her vision clearing as she sought out the sandwich bar across the road. He stood out, even through the traffic, the plate glass front of the shop and the lunchtime feeding frenzy. She watched him grab his purchases, two paper bags and some water, and step out onto the footpath.

Her chest kicked once.

Twice.

If she were romantic she might have fancied that it was her heart beating at the sight of him.

Unfortunately, reality struck as she lost balance and fell backward, separating from the red mist emanating from her chest.

Apparently love and high-velocity penetrative trauma to the sternum felt a lot alike.

**A/N**: As always, thanks so much for comments left up until this point. They are incredibly encouraging and wonderful to read!


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